ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-11-495-2011 The role of the QBO in the inter-hemispheric coupling of summer mesospheric temperatures Espy P. J. 1 Ochoa Fernández S. 1 4 Forkman P. 2 Murtagh D. 2 Stegman J. 3 Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain 17 01 2011 11 2 495 502 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/495/2011/acp-11-495-2011.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/495/2011/acp-11-495-2011.pdf

Inter-hemispheric coupling between the polar summer mesosphere and planetary-wave activity in the extra-tropical winter stratosphere has recently been inferred using Polar Mesospheric Cloud (PMC) properties as a proxy for mesospheric temperature (Karlsson et al., 2007). Here we confirm these results using a ten-year time series of July mesospheric temperatures near 60° N derived from the hydroxyl (OH) nightglow. In addition, we show that the time-lagged correlation between these summer mesospheric temperatures and the ECMWF winter stratospheric temperatures displays a strong Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO). The sign and phase of the correlation is consistent with the QBO modulation of the extra-tropical stratospheric dynamics in the Southern Hemisphere via the Holton-Tan mechanism (Holton and Tan, 1980). This lends strength to the identification of synoptic and planetary waves as the driver of the inter-hemispheric coupling, and results in a strong QBO modulation of the polar summer mesospheric temperatures.

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