Comments on “The Unusual Southern Hemisphere Winter of 2002”

Abstract

The first-documented major sudden stratospheric warming and cooling followed by rapid wind perturbations over Antarctica during the Southern Hemisphere 1972 winter and early spring was reported by me (Caffin 1975; Sehra 1975, 1976a,b,c, 1979, 2009), although the year 1972 was also very unusual as a major solar proton event had also occurred at that time, destroying ozone and causing cooling (Xanthakis et al. 1981). Newman andNash (2005) owe an explanation for omitting my references from their paper irrespective of whether it satisfies the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) definition, as this warming and cooling was remarkably significant, and they had considered all available evidence.