Reply to “Comments on ‘The Unusual Southern Hemisphere Winter of 2002’”

Abstract

In Newman and Nash (2005, hereafter NN2005), the evolution of the unusual Southern Hemisphere (SH) 2002 stratospheric winter was discussed. This SH winter had a very large planetary wave-2 event in late September that resulted in an SH major stratospheric sudden warming. In particular, we stated that ‘‘This large wave event resulted in the first ever observed major stratospheric warming in the SH and split the Antarctic ozone hole.’’ Sehra (2014) has asked for an explanation as to why Sehra (1975, hereafter S1975) was not referenced in NN2005. Specifically, S1975 was not cited because a major stratospheric sudden warming is not evident in those results or in the discussion. S1975 documented temperature fluctuations over Molodezhnaya station (688S, 468E) in the 30–80-km altitude range using 60 rocketsondes during 1972 (16 observations of winds using falling chaff, 55–90-km altitude range). The S1975 observations provide an early documentation of in situ upperstratospheric and mesospheric temperatures and winds. For our NN2005 paper, there are two issues with respect to S1975: