Variations in The Frequency of Sudden Stratospheric Warmings in CMIP5 and CMIP6

The frequency of sudden stratospheric warming events (SSWs) is an essential characteristic of the coupled stratosphere-troposphere system. This study is motivated by the fact that many of the CMIP5 and CMIP6 climate models considerably over- or underestimate the observed SSW frequency. The goal is to understand the causes for the large intermodel spread in the number of SSWs and relate it to specific model configurations. To this end, various dynamical quantities associated with the simulation of SSWs are investigated. It is found that variations in the SSW frequency are closely related to the strength of the polar vortex and the stratospheric wave activity. While it is difficult to explain the variations in the strength of the polar vortex, the stratospheric wave activity is strongly influenced by the background state (i.e., zonal wind and index of refraction) of the lower stratosphere. An important regulator for the background is the extratropical tropopause temperature, which in turn is associated with the vertical model resolution. Low-resolution models tend to have large biases in simulating the location and temperature of the extratropical tropopause. The results indicate that the simulated SSW frequency is a useful metric for model performance, as the frequency is highly sensitive to a number of stratospheric and tropospheric factors.