Winds in Stratosphere

Winds in the stratosphere and mesosphere

The winds in the stratosphere and mesosphere are usually estimated from temperature data collected by satellites. The winds at these high levels are assumed to be geostrophic. Overall, in the midlatitudes, they have a westerly component in the winter and an easterly component in the summer. The highest zonal winds are around 60–70 metres per second (135–155 miles per hour) at 65–70 km (37–43 miles) above Earth’s surface. The west-wind component is stronger during the winter in the Southern Hemisphere. The axes of the strongest easterly and westerly wind components in the Southern Hemisphere tilt toward the south with increased altitude during the Northern Hemisphere winter and the Southern Hemisphere summer. The zonal component of the thermal wind shear is in accord with the zonal distribution of temperature.
During the winter there is, in the mean, an intense cyclonic vortex about the poles in the lower stratosphere. Over the North Pole this vortex has an embedded mean trough over northeastern North America and over northeastern Asia, whereas over the Pacific there is a weak anticyclonic vortex. The winter cyclonic vortex over the South Pole is much more symmetrical than the one over the North Pole. During the summer there is an anticyclone above each pole that is much weaker than the wintertime cyclone.
In the stratosphere, deviations from the mean behaviour of the winds occur during events called sudden warmings, when the meridional temperature gradient reverses on timescales as short as several days. This also has the effect of reversing the zonal wind direction. Sudden warmings tend to occur during the early and middle parts of the winter and the transition period from winter to spring. The latter marks the changeover from the cold winter polar cyclone to the warm summer polar anticyclone. It is noteworthy that long waves from the troposphere can propagate into the stratosphere during the winter when westerlies and...