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The impact of the stratosphere on the troposphere during the southern hemisphere stratospheric sudden warming, September 2002
Author(s) -
Charlton A. J.,
O'neill A.,
Lahoz W. A.,
Massacand A. C.,
Berrisford P.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1256/qj.04.43
Subject(s) - troposphere , stratosphere , sudden stratospheric warming , environmental science , northern hemisphere , climatology , atmospheric sciences , southern hemisphere , storm track , storm , global warming , climate change , meteorology , geology , polar vortex , geography , oceanography
Recent research has established that a small but statistically significant link exists between the stratosphere and the troposphere in the northern hemisphere extratropics. In this paper it is shown that a similar link exists between the stratosphere and troposphere during the unprecedented September 2002 sudden warming in the southern hemisphere. Two ensemble forecasts of the stratospheric sudden warming are run which have different stratospheric initial conditions and identical tropospheric initial conditions. Stratospheric initial conditions have an impact on the tropospheric flow at the peak of the major warming (5 days into the run) and on longer time‐scales (18 days into the run). The character of this influence is a localized, equatorward shift of the tropospheric storm track. The averaged impact of the change in the position of the storm‐track maps strongly onto the Southern Annular Mode structure, but does not have an annular character. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society.