How Frequent Are Antarctic Sudden Stratospheric Warmings in Present and Future Climate?

Southern Hemisphere (SH) stratospheric sudden warmings (SSWs) result in smaller Antarctic ozone holes and are linked to extreme midlatitude weather on subseasonal to seasonal timescales. Therefore, it is of interest how often such events occur and whether we should expect more events in the future....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Jucker, M, Reichler, T, Waugh, DW
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/unsworks_79028
https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/bitstreams/3a234dd5-ca6f-4295-be15-d26ed9bbc29f/download
https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL093215
Description
Summary:Southern Hemisphere (SH) stratospheric sudden warmings (SSWs) result in smaller Antarctic ozone holes and are linked to extreme midlatitude weather on subseasonal to seasonal timescales. Therefore, it is of interest how often such events occur and whether we should expect more events in the future. Here, we use a pair of novel multimillennial simulations with a stratosphere-resolving coupled ocean-atmosphere climate model to show that the frequency of SSWs, such as observed 2002 and 2019, is about one in 22 years for 1990 conditions. In addition, we show that we should expect the frequency of SSWs, and that of more moderate vortex weakening events, to strongly decrease by the end of this century.