Improving representation of stratospheric Polar Vortex in Southern Hemisphere with low-frequency frontal waves

Many global models tend to produce a stratospheric polar vortex in the Southern Hemisphere winter that is too strong and too cold - a common issue known as the "cold-pole bias". This bias can affect how models simulate important features like the ozone hole. In this study, we use a development version of the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) at various horizontal resolutions. We find that higher-resolution simulations reduce the cold-pole bias and better capture the structure of the polar vortex. Motivated by this improvement, we introduce a new scheme to represent a source of frontal gravity waves that so far have been missing in the model. Including this new source representation leads to significant improvements in the model's ability to simulate the Southern Hemisphere stratospheric polar vortex, particularly in wind speeds and the vertical structure of the jet stream.

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Resource Type dataset
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Bounding Box South Lat N/A
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Bounding Box East Long N/A
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Resource Format NetCDF
Standardized Resource Format NetCDF
Asset Size 695573.844 MB
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Author Bramberger, Martina
Bacmeister, Julio
Publisher NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research
Publication Date 2025-09-10
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier d014619
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere
Progress completed
Metadata Date 2025-10-09T01:47:42Z
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.gdex::d014619
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Bramberger, Martina, Bacmeister, Julio. (2025). Improving representation of stratospheric Polar Vortex in Southern Hemisphere with low-frequency frontal waves. NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research. https://gdex.ucar.edu/datasets/d014619. Accessed 12 October 2025.

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