The Sudden Stratospheric Warming Atlas

Abstract:

Sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs) are large and rapid temperature increases in the polar stratosphere associated with a complete reversal of the climatological westerly winds in wintertime. These extreme events can have substantial impacts on wintertime surface climate, such as cold air outbreaks over North America and Eurasia, or anomalous warming over Greenland. Here we promote our progress towards a new atlas of historical SSW events and their impacts on the surface. The SSW atlas contains a variety of metrics, time series, maps, and animations for individual SSW events. The atlas will allow users to examine the structure and development of individual SSWs, the variability between events, the surface impacts in temperature and precipitation, and the impacts of SSWs during years with certain tropospheric signatures, like El Niño or La Niña winters.