Effects of meridional sea surface temperature changes on stratospheric temperature and circulation

Using a state-of-the-art chemistry-climate model, we analyzed the atmospheric responses to increases in sea surface temperature (SST). The results showed that increases in SST and the SST meridional gradient could intensify the subtropical westerly jets and significantly weaken the northern polar vortex. In the model runs, global uniform SST increases produced a more significant impact on the southern stratosphere than the northern stratosphere, while SST gradient increases produced a more significant impact on the northern stratosphere. The asymmetric responses of the northern and southern polar stratosphere to SST meridional gradient changes were found to be mainly due to different wave properties and transmissions in the northern and southern atmosphere. Although SST increases may give rise to stronger waves, the results showed that the effect of SST increases on the vertical propagation of tropospheric waves into the stratosphere will vary with height and latitude and be sensitive to SST meridional gradient changes. Both uniform and non-uniform SST increases accelerated the large-scale Brewer-Dobson circulation (BDC), but the gradient increases of SST between 60°S and 60°N resulted in younger mean age-of-air in the stratosphere and a larger increase in tropical upwelling, with a much higher tropopause than from a global uniform 1.0 K SST increase. © 2014 Chinese National Committee for International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Science Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.