Analysis of the variations in the strength and position of stratospheric sudden warming in the past three decades

Abstract

The authors investigate the statistical features of variations in the strength and position of stratospheric sudden warming (SSW) in the Northern Hemisphere based on ERA-Interim data from 1979 to 2016. It is found that there are 55 SSW events in the past 38 years (average: 1.4 times per year), including 33 major SSW events and 22 minor SSW events. The events mainly occur in February. The variations of the maximum meridional gradient of the zonal mean temperature of the SSW events show increasing trends from 1979 to 1983 and from 1998 to 2011, and decreasing trends from 1984 to 1997 and from 2012 to 2016. However, the linear trend of the variations in the past three decades shows a negative trend. Meanwhile, the strength and duration of major SSW events show similar features. Some SSW events occur at nearly the same time at different levels from 100 hPa to 10 hPa, while others first occur at 10 hPa and then the signal propagates downwards to lower levels. A very interesting phenomenon is that the maximum temperature centers of these 55 SSW events are mainly located over the Eurasian continent between 30°E and 120°E. This may be related to a polar vortex shifting to the Eurasian continent in the past three decades.

Keywords

• Stratospheric sudden warming
• meridional gradient
• zonal mean temperature
• maximum temperature center