Revisiting the Mystery of Recent Stratospheric Temperature Trends

An update of observed stratospheric temperature trends

1 National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO 80307 12 2 Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading RG6 6BB, 13 UK 14 3 NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ 08542 15 4 Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Oxford University, Oxford 16 OX1 3PU UK 17 5 Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/IPSL, CNRS, Ecole Polytechniq...

Stratospheric temperature trends: our evolving understanding

We review the scientific literature since the 1960s to examine the evolution of modeling tools and observations that have advanced understanding of global stratospheric temperature changes. Observations show overall cooling of the stratosphere during the period for which they are available (since the late 1950s and late 1970s from radiosondes and satellites, respectively), interrupted by episod...

Stratospheric and tropospheric SSU/MSU temperature trends

On the seasonal dependence of tropical lower-stratospheric temperature trends

This study examines the seasonality of tropical lower-stratospheric temperature trends using the Microwave Sounding Unit lower-stratospheric channel (T4) for 1980– 2008. We present evidence that this seasonality is largely a response to changes in the Brewer-Dobson circulation (BDC) driven by extratropical wave forcing. We show how the tropical T4 trend can be used as an indicator of changes in...

The contribution of ozone to future stratospheric temperature trends

The projected recovery of ozone from the effects of ozone depleting substances this century will modulate the stratospheric cooling due to CO2, thereby affecting the detection and attribution of stratospheric temperature trends. Here the impact of future ozone changes on stratospheric temperatures is quantified for three representative concentration pathways (RCPs) using simulations from the Fi...