2006 Articles

Stratosphere–Troposphere Coupling in a Relatively Simple AGCM: Impact of the Seasonal Cycle

Kushner, Paul J.; Polvani, Lorenzo M.

The seasonal time dependence of the tropospheric circulation response to polar stratospheric cooling in a simple atmospheric general circulation model is investigated. When the model is run without a seasonal cycle, polar stratospheric cooling induces a positive annular-mode response in the troposphere that takes a remarkably long time—several hundred days—to fully equilibrate. One is thus led to ask whether the tropospheric response would survive in the presence of a seasonal cycle. When a seasonal cycle is introduced into the model stratosphere, the tropospheric response appears with a distinct time lag with respect to the stratospheric cooling, but, in the long-term mean, the pattern of the wind response is very similar to the one that results from stratospheric forcing in the absence of a seasonal cycle.