Potential impact of tropopause sharpness on the structure and strength of the general circulation

Abstract The wintertime extratropical general circulation may be viewed as being primarily governed by interactions between Rossby waves and the background flow. These propagate vertically meridionally away from their sources amplify within core of tropopause-level jet, which acts a waveguide. strength this waveguide is in part controlled tropopause sharpness, itself function inversion layer (TIL), enhanced static stability just above tropopause. Here, we report strong relation interannual-to-multidecadal variations mid-latitude TIL features (e.g., jet latitude, Hadley cell) reanalysis climate models. Similar relationships hold for variability across Experiments with mechanistic model show that sharper promotes an intensified equatorward shifted jet.