The key role of ocean-induced non-conservative processes in Northern Hemisphere stratospheric response to climate changes.

The response of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) stratosphere to climate change has been usually studied within the classical Transformed Eulerian Mean framework, which focuses mainly on the impact of the resolved atmospheric waves. The role of the non-conservative (or wave-free) processes (like diabatic heating and diffusive potential vorticity mixing) in setting the stratospheric response to climate change remains poorly understood. Here we use different stand-alone atmospheric model experiments and the newly developed Finite Amplitude Local Wave Activity (FALWA) theory, in order to understand the role and the origins of the non-conservative processes in the NH stratospheric response to climate change.

Our model response can reproduce the well-known weakening of the NH polar stratospheric vortex and strengthening of mid-latitude and subtropical stratospheric westerlies.  It is shown that the overall structure of the wintertime response of the NH stratosphere to climate change is maintained mainly by the ocean-induced non-conservative processes with limited contribution of the wave-induced conservative dynamics. In particular, the tropical ocean warming due to climate change maintains the wave free component of the westerly wind, which setup the background wind for poleward wave propagation and the associated wave-induced weakening of the polar stratospheric vortex. The FALWA budget reveals that the weak response of the conservative (or wave induced) component of the stratospheric westerly is maintained mainly by the eddy meridional potential vorticity (PV) transport (or EP-flux divergence) against the non-conservative diffusive PV-mixing. Our work requires the consideration of the non-conservative processes for an accurate dynamical understanding of the stratospheric response to climate change.