Identification

Title

Polar mesospheric ozone loss initiates downward coupling of solar signal in the Northern Hemisphere

Abstract

Solar driven energetic particle precipitation (EPP) is an important factor in polar atmospheric ozone balance and has been linked to ground-level regional climate variability. However, the linking mechanism has remained ambiguous. The observed and simulated ground-level changes start well before the processes from the main candidate, the so-called EPP-indirect effect, would start. Here we show that initial reduction of polar mesospheric ozone and the resulting change in atmospheric heating rapidly couples to dynamics, transferring the signal downwards, shifting the tropospheric jet polewards. This pathway is not constrained to the polar vortex. Rather, a subtropical route initiated by a changing wind shear plays a key role. Our results show that the signal propagates downwards in timescales consistent with observed tropospheric level climatic changes linked to EPP. This pathway, from mesospheric ozone to regional climate, is independent of the EPP-indirect effect, and solves the long-standing mechanism problem for EPP effects on climate.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7s75mp0

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-10T19:55:15.603170

Metadata language

eng; USA