Surface impacts of the Quasi Biennial Oscillation

Gray, Lesley J.; Anstey, James A.; Kawatani, Yoshio; Lu, Hua; Osprey, Scott; Schenzinger, Verena

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-8227-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-8227-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The SPARC Reanalysis Intercomparison Project (S-RIP) (ACP/ESSD...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-8227-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 11

Research article

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13 Jun 2018

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 13 Jun 2018

Surface impacts of the Quasi Biennial Oscillation

Lesley J. Gray, James A. Anstey, Yoshio Kawatani, Hua Lu, Scott Osprey, and Verena Schenzinger

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Final revised paper (published on 13 Jun 2018)
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Preprint (discussion started on 11 Dec 2017)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review of Paper', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Jan 2018
RC2: 'review of Gray et al', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Jan 2018
AC1: 'Author response to reviewer comments', Lesley J. Gray, 16 Mar 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Lesley J. Gray on behalf of the Authors (16 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (20 Mar 2018) by Gabriele Stiller

RR by Marvin A. Geller (26 Mar 2018)

RR by Chaim Garfinkel (31 Mar 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Second review of “Surface Impacts of the Quasi Biennial Oscillation”
By Lesley J. Gray, James A. Anstey, Yoshio Kawatani, Hua Lu, Scott Osprey, and Verena Schenzinger

The authors have satisfactorily addressed my comments on the original submission. Their final paragraph in the conclusions is quite reasonable, and while I hope the authors consider pursuing some of the analysis I suggested in my original comments for future work, the paper in its current form stands alone as a significant contribution. This paper should be accepted after the authors clarify some final, very minor points:

Page 2, line 11 There are earlier papers than that of Hansen that address nonlinearities between the effect of the QBO and that of ENSO, such as Garfinkel and Hartmann 2007, Wei et al 2007, and Calvo et al 2009 (the first two using reanalysis and the latter using models).

Page 6 line 4: what precise formula is used to account for the reduction in degrees of freedom due to autocorrelation of the indices? (There are a few different I’m aware of, and for reproducibility the authors should state which they use.)

Page 14 line 16: I think the authors intend to cite Garfinkel and Hartmann 2011 here, not Garfinkel et al 2012

Signed
Chaim Garfinkel

Garfinkel, C. I., and D. L. Hartmann. "Effects of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the quasi‐biennial oscillation on polar temperatures in the stratosphere." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 112, no. D19 (2007).

Wei, Ke, Wen Chen, and Ronghui Huang. "Association of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures with the stratospheric Holton‐Tan Oscillation in the Northern Hemisphere winter." Geophysical Research Letters 34, no. 16 (2007).

Calvo, Natalia, Marco A. Giorgetta, Ricardo Garcia‐Herrera, and Elisa Manzini. "Nonlinearity of the combined warm ENSO and QBO effects on the Northern Hemisphere polar vortex in MAECHAM5 simulations." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 114, no. D13 (2009).

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (13 Apr 2018) by Gabriele Stiller

AR by Lesley J. Gray on behalf of the Authors (23 Apr 2018) Author's response

ED: Publish as is (09 May 2018) by Gabriele Stiller

AR by Lesley J. Gray on behalf of the Authors (21 May 2018)

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Short summary

A major phenomenon in the stratosphere is the Quasi Biennial Oscillation (QBO). Although a feature of the equatorial stratosphere, its influence extends to surface weather at both equatorial and mid latitudes. Improved knowledge of mechanisms of influence should help to improve weather forecasts. In this paper, QBO impacts at the surface are characterized and dominant mechanisms explored. Three pathways are identified, referred to as the tropical, subtropical and polar routes.