El Niño events have significant global impacts on weather and climate, but these reach up into the stratosphere, beyond the troposphere where most of Earth’s weather takes place.
stratosphere
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Energetic Electrons Can Penetrate the Stratosphere
Precipitations of electrons with energies greater than 30 kiloelectron volts from the slot region penetrate at low altitude and can contribute to destroy ozone.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Dramatic Stratospheric Warmings Carved a Hole in the Ionosphere
A new study of sudden temperature spikes in Earth’s stratosphere could improve space weather forecasting.
Posted inNews
Why Are Siberian Temperatures Plummeting While the Arctic Warms?
The answer involves the intricacies of stratospheric circulation, which, if better represented in climate models, could help predict extreme weather events in Siberia and elsewhere.
Posted inNews
Seeing Green: A Stratospheric View of the 2017 Total Eclipse
Airborne telescopes gave scientists a sky-high view of the 2017 Great American Eclipse as they took measurements that are difficult to obtain from the ground.
Posted inScience Updates
The Stratosphere and Its Role in Tropical Teleconnections
Joint SPARC Dynamics and Observations Workshop; Kyoto, Japan, 9–14 October 2017
Posted inFeatures
How Sudden Stratospheric Warming Affects the Whole Atmosphere
High above Earth’s surface, air temperatures occasionally increase suddenly, producing widespread effects on weather, air chemistry, and telecommunications.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Earth-like Oscillations Detected in Saturn’s Stratosphere
By comparing Cassini observations spanning ten years, Saturn’s equatorial oscillation is shown to have similarities to Earth’s Quasi-Biennial Oscillation and Semi-Annual Oscillation.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Could Stratospheric Ozone Depletion Make Hadley Cells Expand?
Convection-driven Hadley cells are expanding poleward. Scientists now may have uncovered part of the reason why.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Mysterious Anomaly Interrupts Stratospheric Wind Pattern
For the first time, scientists have observed a deviation from the typical alternating pattern of easterly and westerly winds in the equatorial stratosphere.