The Brewer–Dobson circulation (mainly meridional circulation) is very important for stratospheric ozone dynamics and thus for the overall state of the stratosphere. There are some indications that the meridional circulation in the stratosphere could be longitudinally dependent, which would have an impact on the ozone distribution. Therefore, we analyse here the meridional component of the strat...

The climatological large-scale patterns of diurnal and semidiurnal near-surface wind variations over the tropical Pacific Ocean are documented using 3 yr of hourly measurements from the Tropical Atmosphere–Ocean moored buoy array. Semidiurnal variations account for 68% of the mean daily variance of the zonal wind component, while diurnal variations account for 82% of the mean daily variance of ...

[1] Between May 2002 and April 2006, many continuous observations of mesopause region temperature and horizontal wind, each lasting longer than 24 h (termed full-diurnalcycle observations), were completed at the Colorado State University Na Lidar Facility in Fort Collins, Colorado (41 N, 105 W). The combined data set consists of 120 full-diurnalcycle observations binned on a monthly basis, with...

Accurate three-dimensional wind fields are essential for diagnosing a variety of important climate processes in the Arctic, such as the advection and deposition of heat and moisture, changes in circulation features, and transport of trace constituents. In light of recent studies revealing significant biases in upperlevel winds over the Arctic Ocean from reanalyses, new daily wind fields are gen...

WIRA is a ground-based microwave Doppler spectroradiometer specifically designed for the measurement of profiles of horizontal wind in the upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere region where no other continuously running measurement technique exists. A proof of principle has been delivered in a previous publication. A technical upgrade including a new high-frequency amplifier and sideband filt...

The recharge oscillator paradigm for ENSO is further investigated by using a simple coupled model, which externally includes the equatorial wave dynamics represented by the Kelvin and gravest symmetric Rossby waves. To investigate the role of eddies in the Pacific basin–wide adjustment to the wind forcing, particularly at the western and eastern boundaries, the zonal mean and eddy parts are tre...

The purpose of this review is to describe the global scope of the multidecadal climate oscillations that go back at least, through several hundred years. Literature, historic data, satellite data and global circulation model output have been used to provide evidence for the zonal and meridional jet stream patterns. These patterns were predominantly zonal from the 1970s to 1990s and switched sin...

Numerical models are used to test whether the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) can be reconstructed from boundary densities and the wind stress. In idealized model setups without topography the strength as well as the temporal and spatial variability of the MOC cell can largely be reproduced from boundary densities and the zonal wind stress. With added slopes along the meridional bounda...

Meridional dipoles of zonal wind and geopotential height are found extensively in empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis and single-point correlation maps of observations and models. Notable examples are the North Atlantic Oscillation and the so-called annular modes (or the Arctic Oscillation). Minimal stochastic models are developed to explain the origin of such structure. In particular,...