www.ann-geophys.net/28/2133/2010/ doi:10.5194/angeo-28-2133-2010 © Author(s) 2010. CC Attribution 3.0 License.

• Main Authors: D. H. W. Peters, P. Vargin, A. Gabriel, N. Tsvetkova, V. Yushkov
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: D. H. W. Peters; Arctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.377.1014; http://www.leif.org/EOS/angeo-28-2133-2010.pdf

Abstract. The dynamical evolution of the relatively warm stratospheric winter season 2002–2003 in the Northern Hemisphere was studied and compared with the cold winter 2004–2005 based on NCEP-Reanalyses. Record low temperatures were observed in the lower and middle stratosphere over the Arctic region only at the beginning of the 2002–2003 winter. Six sudden stratospheric warming events, including the major warming event with a splitting of the polar vortex in mid-January 2003, have been identified. This led to a very high vacillation of the zonal mean circulation and a weakening of the stratospheric polar vortex over the whole winter season. An estimate of the mean chemical ozone destruction inside the polar vortex showed a total ozone loss of about 45 DU in winter 2002–2003; that is about 2.5 times smaller than in winter 2004–2005.