Research from MIT Haystack Observatory finds a stratospheric warming event over Antarctica linked to anomalies in near-Earth space above North America and Europe.
Weather is a tricky science — even more so at very high altitudes, with a mix of plasma and neutral particles.
In sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs) — large meteorological disturbances related to the polar vortex in which the polar stratosphere temperature increases as it is affected by the winds around the pole — the polar vortex is weakened. SSWs also have profound atmospheric effects at great distances, causing changes in the hemisphere opposite from the location of the original SSW — changes that extend all the way to the upper thermosphere and ionosphere.
A study published on July 16 in Geophysical Research Letters by MIT Haystack Observatory’s Larisa Goncharenko and colleagues examines the effects of a recent major Antarctic SSW on the Northern Hemisphere by studying changes observed in the upper atmosphere over North America and Europe.
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