The anomalous change in the QBO in 2015–2016

By P. Newman, L. Coy, Steven Pawson, L. Lait. 2016

172 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The quasi‐biennial oscillation (QBO) is a tropical lower stratospheric, downward propagating zonal wind variation, with an average period of ~28 months. The QBO has been constantly documented since 1953. Here we describe the evolution of the QBO during the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2015–2016 using radiosonde observations and meteorological reanalyses. Normally, the QBO would show a steady downward propagation of the westerly phase. In 2015–2016, there was an anomalous upward displacement of this westerly phase from ~30 hPa to 15 hPa. These westerlies impinge on or “cutoff” the normal downward propagation of the easterly phase. In addition, easterly winds develop at 40 hPa. Comparisons to tropical wind statistics for the 1953 to present record demonstrate that this 2015–2016 QBO disruption is unprecedented.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b47fa579094fcd25071bb6390ee0ae9fd74c6618

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In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

The ERA5 global reanalysis: Preliminary extension to 1950 (2021, background): “Discussion of Figure 26 would be incomplete without noting that panels b and d show that the QBO, for the second cycle in succession, has experienced disruption of its downward propagation, as discussed by Newman et al. (2016) for the 2015/16 event and Anstey et al. (2020) for the latest event.”