Articles | Volume 25, issue 20
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-13651-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-13651-2025
Research article
 | 
24 Oct 2025
Research article |  | 24 Oct 2025

Role of in situ-excited planetary waves in polar vortex splitting during the 2002 Southern Hemisphere sudden stratospheric warming event

Ji-Hee Yoo and Hye-Yeong Chun

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Cited articles

Allen, D. R., Bevilacqua, R. M., Nedoluha, G. E., Randall, C. E., and Manney, G. L.: Unusual stratospheric transport and mixing during the 2002 Antarctic winter, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, https://doi.org/10.1029/2003GL017117, 2003. 
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Baldwin, M., Hirooka, T., O'Neill, A., and Yoden, S: Major stratospheric warming in the Southern Hemisphere in 2002: Dynamical aspects of the ozone hole split, SPARC Newsl., 20, 24–26, 2003. 
Charlton, A. J. and Polvani, L. M.: A new look at stratospheric sudden warmings, Part I: climatology and modeling benchmarks, J. Climate, 20, 449–469, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI3996.1, 2007. 
Charlton, A. J., O'Neill, A., Lahoz, W. A., and Berrisford, P.: The splitting of the stratospheric polar vortex in the Southern Hemisphere, September 2002: Dynamical evolution, J. Atmos. Sci., 62, 590–602, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAS-3318.1, 2005. 
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This study revisits the Southern Hemisphere's only major sudden stratospheric warming in September 2002, marked by an unprecedented polar vortex split. In addition to upward-propagating planetary wave 2 (PW2), westward PW2 generated in-situ by barotropic–baroclinic instability, contributed to the vortex split. Unstable PW2 growth resulted from nonlinear wave-wave interactions and over-reflection. Vortex destabilization occurred as the anomalously poleward-shifted vortex reversed to easterlies.
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