The role of the stratospheric state in upward wave flux prior to Sudden Stratospheric Warmings: a SNAPSI analysis

Abstract

Several studies highlight the relevance of considering polar winter stratospheric information such as the occurrence of Sudden Stratospheric Warmings (SSWs) for skillful Subseasonal to Seasonal (S2S) surface climate predictions. However, current S2S forecast systems can only predict these events about two weeks in advance. A potential way of increasing their predictability is to improve the models' representation of the triggering mechanisms of SSWs. Traditional theories indicate that SSWs follow sustained wave dissipation in the stratosphere, but the relative role of tropospheric versus stratospheric conditions in the enhancement of stratospheric wave activity remains unclear. This study aims to quantify the role of the stratospheric state in wave activity preceding SSWs by analyzing three recent SSWs: the boreal SSWs of 2018 and 2019 and the austral minor SSW of 2019, using specific sets of S2S experiments. These ensembles follow the SNAPSI (Stratospheric Nudging And Predictable Surface Impacts) guidelines and include free-evolving atmospheric runs and nudged simulations, where the zonally-symmetric stratospheric state is nudged to either observations of a certain SSW or a climatological state. Our results show that the models struggle to capture the strong enhancement of wave activity preceding the 2018 SSW, limiting predictability beyond 10 d. In contrast, both SSWs of 2019 are better predicted, consistent with a more accurate simulation of the wave activity. Nudging the zonal mean stratospheric state does not drastically influence the upward wave activity flux or tropospheric circulation anomalies prior to these SSWs, but it has some impact on the stratospheric wave activity, although this modulation depends on the event characteristics. The boreal 2019 SSW appears to be primarily driven by tropospheric processes. In contrast, stratospheric contributions may have also played an important role in triggering the boreal 2018 SSW and the austral 2019 SSW. Understanding these variations is key to improving SSW predictability in S2S models.