Transient Characteristics of Residual Meridional Circulation during Stratospheric Sudden Warming

The residual meridional circulation derived from the transformed Eulerian-mean thermodynamic equation and continuity equation can be separated into two parts, the slowly varying diabatic circulation and the transient circulation, as demonstrated by others. We calculated and composite-analyzed the transient and diabatic circulation for 14 stratospheric sudden warming (SSW) events from 1979--2002 by using the daily ECMWF reanalysis data. Specifically, the transient residual meridional circulation was calculated both with and without inclusion of the eddy heat transport term in the transformed Eulerian-mean thermodynamic equation to investigate the importance of the eddy heat transport term. The results showed that calculations of transient residual meridional circulation present rapid variations during SSWs, with or without inclusion of the eddy heat transport term. Although the patterns of transient residual meridional circulation with the eddy heat transport term were similar to that without the eddy heat transport term during SSW, the magnitudes in the upper stratosphere and high-latitude regions differed. As for the diabatic circulation, its daily variations were small during SSW events, and its patterns were in agreement with its monthly average.