On the signal of the 11-year sunspot cycle in the stratosphere over the Antarctic and its modulation by the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO

• Main Author: Karin Labitzke
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: mean meridional; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.526.6603; http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/labitzke/special/JASTP-SPECIAL-Labitzke-2004.pdf

In earlier studies we examined the global structure and the size of the signal of the 11-year sunspot cycle (SSC) in the stratosphere and troposphere. We used for the correlations between the solar cycle and heights and temperatures at different pressure levels mainly the whole data set and only during northern winters the years were stratified according to the phase of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO). This work is expanded here and it is shown that the QBO must be introduced throughout the year, because the solar signal is very different in the respective phases of the QBO, particularly over the tropics and subtropics. The structure of the solar signal appears to indicate that the mean meridional circulation systems (e.g., the Brewer-Dobson Circulation) are influenced by the SSC, and stronger so during the east phase of the QBO.