|
Detailed Reference Information |
Joshi, M.M., Charlton, A.J. and Scaife, A.A. (2006). On the influence of stratospheric water vapor changes on the tropospheric circulation. Geophysical Research Letters 33: doi: 10.1029/2006GL025983. issn: 0094-8276. |
|
Observations suggest that the mixing ratio of water vapour in the stratosphere has increased by 20--50% between the 1960s and mid-1990s. Here we show that inclusion of such a stratospheric water vapour (SWV) increase in a state-of-the-art climate model modifies the circulation of the extratropical troposphere: the modeled increase in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index is 40% of the observed increase in NAO index between 1965 and 1995, suggesting that if the SWV trend is real, it explains a significant fraction of the observed NAO trend. Our results imply that SWV changes provide a novel mechanism for communicating the effects of large tropical volcanic eruptions and ENSO events to the extratropical troposphere over timescales of a few years, which provides a mechanism for interannual climate predictability. Finally, we discuss our results in the context of regional climate change associated with changes in methane emissions. |
|
|
|
BACKGROUND DATA FILES |
|
|
Abstract |
|
|
|
|
|
Keywords
Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Middle atmosphere, constituent transport and chemistry, Global Change, Climate dynamics (0429, 3309), Atmospheric Processes, Climate change and variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513), Atmospheric Processes, Middle atmosphere dynamics (0341, 0342), Atmospheric Processes, Stratosphere/troposphere interactions |
|
Publisher
American Geophysical Union 2000 Florida Avenue N.W. Washington, D.C. 20009-1277 USA 1-202-462-6900 1-202-328-0566 service@agu.org |
|
|
|