Erik Romanowsky, Dörthe Handorf, Ralf Jaiser, Ingo Wohltmann, Wolfgang Dorn, Jinro Ukita, Judah Cohen, Klaus Dethloff, Markus Rex

Scientific Reports

Published date May 28, 2019

The role of stratospheric ozone for Arctic-midlatitude linkages

  • States that:
    • Sea-ice retreat allows for an increased transport of heat and momentum from the ocean up to the tropo- and stratosphere by enhanced upward propagation of planetary-scale atmospheric waves
    • In the upper atmosphere, these waves deposit the momentum transported, disturbing the stratospheric polar vortex, which can lead to a breakdown of this circulation with the potential to also significantly impact the troposphere in mid- to late-winter and early spring
  • Surmises that therefore, an accurate representation of stratospheric processes in climate models is necessary to improve the understanding of the impact of retreating sea ice on the atmospheric circulation
  • Models the atmospheric response to a prescribed decline in Arctic sea ice in order to show that including interactive stratospheric ozone chemistry in atmospheric model calculations leads to an improvement in tropo-stratospheric interactions compared to simulations without interactive chemistry