A new assessment of the mid-1970s abrupt atmospheric temperature change in the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and associated solar forcing implications

Abstract

Based on the reanalysis data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP–NCAR) and solar radio irradiance (SRI) at 10.7 cm wavelength obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction center, the abrupt temperature change in the mid-1970s and its possible association with solar irradiance variability have been investigated. The results show that a discontinuous abrupt change in the mid-1970s in the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis was observed in the tropical lower and middle stratospheric temperature. The shift in temperature and its timing agrees well with the climate regime shift discovered in the radiosonde observations (HadAT), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Re-Analysis (ERA-40), and many previous studies and manifests a statistically significant change at the 95% confidence level. A corresponding change of the SRI was identified in the mid 1970s although the statistical t test value is not very high. The running correlation with a 21-year moving time window exhibits a strong positive correlation between the solar cycle and atmospheric temperature in the tropical stratosphere during the period of 1948–2007. However, the positive correlation was broken at the time of the mid-1970s abrupt change and two peak positive correlation points were observed in 1972 and 1982, respectively.