Polar Climate Change as Manifest in Atmospheric Circulation

Purpose of ReviewDynamic manifestations of climate change, i.e. those related to circulation, are less well understood than are thermodynamic, or temperature-related aspects. However, this knowledge gap is narrowing. We review recent progress in understanding the causes of observed changes in polar tropospheric and stratospheric circulation, and in interpreting climate model projections of their future changes.Recent FindingsTrends in the annular modes reflect the influences of multiple drivers. In the Northern Hemisphere, there appears to be a “tug-of-war” between the opposing effects of Arctic near-surface warming and tropical upper tropospheric warming, two predominant features of the atmospheric response to increasing greenhouse gases. Future trends in the Southern Hemisphere largely depend on the competing effects of stratospheric ozone recovery and increasing greenhouse gases.SummaryHuman influence on the Antarctic circulation is detectable in the strengthening of the stratospheric polar vortex and the poleward shift of the tropospheric westerly winds. Observed Arctic circulation changes cannot be confidently separated from internal atmospheric variability.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Current Climate Change Reports

• Publication date

  2018-08-02

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s40641-018-0111-4PMID 30931245PMCID 6411204
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

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