Stratospheric Mountain Waves Trailing across Northern Europe

Abstract

AbstractPlanetary waves disturbed the hitherto stable Arctic stratospheric polar vortex in the middle of January 2016 in such a way that unique tropospheric and stratospheric flow conditions for vertically and horizontally propagating mountain waves developed. Coexisting strong low-level westerly winds across almost all European mountain ranges plus the almost zonally aligned polar-front jet created these favorable conditions for deeply propagating gravity waves. Furthermore, the northward displacement of the polar night jet resulted in a widespread coverage of stratospheric mountain waves trailing across Northern Europe. This paper describes the particular meteorological setting by analyzing the tropospheric and stratospheric flows based on the ERA5 data. The potential of the flow for exciting internal gravity waves from nonorographic sources is evaluated across all altitudes by considering various indices to indicate flow imbalances as δ, Ro, Roζ, Ro⊥, and ΔNBE. The analyzed gravity waves are described and characterized. The main finding of this case study is the exceptionally vast extension of the mountain waves trailing to high latitudes originating from the flow across the mountainous sources that are located at about 45°N. The magnitudes of the simulated stratospheric temperature perturbations attain values larger than 10 K and are comparable to values as documented by recent case studies of large-amplitude mountain waves over South America. The zonal means of the resolved and parameterized stratospheric wave drag during the mountain wave event peak at −4.5 and −32.2 m s−1 day−1, respectively.