Impact of stratospheric processes on climate variability and change in the troposphere

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Climate variability and changes have been often understood and predicted by means of state-of-the-art climate models. Such an example is climate model simulations for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In these models, the atmospheric component is primarily focused on the troposphere where most weather phenomena occur and most anthropogenic greenhouse gases are concentrated. The impact from the above, the stratosphere (from ~10 km to ~50 km above the ground), has often been ignored. Recent studies, however, have shown that stratospheric processes can influence the tropospheric circulation in a major way. It was found that, without realistic stratosphere, climate models can not reproduce recent trends in the North Atlantic Oscillation which dominates weather and climate systems over northeastern North America and western Europe. In the Southern Hemisphere, surface climate has been known to be directly affected by stratospheric ozone.