The upper tropospheric-lower stratospheric ozone drives summer precipitation and wildfire changes in West Siberia.

Siberian wildfires are pivotal in determining the carbon cycle and climate dynamics, exerting a profound impact on the ecosystems of the entire Arctic region. Over the past few decades, variations in summer precipitation in West Siberia have significantly influenced wildfire activity. This study analyzed precipitation trends in West Siberia from 1982 to 2021 using observations and transient simulations, uncovering a strong correlation between precipitation variability and ozone concentrations in the upper troposphere-lower stratosphere (UTLS).

A stratospheric precursor of East Asian summer droughts and floods.

East Asian floods and droughts in summer show a typical dipole pattern with a north-south oscillation centered near 30°N, called the southern drought-northern flood (SDNF) pattern, which has caused significant economic losses and casualties in the past three decades. However, effective explanations and predictions are still challenging, making suitable disaster prevention more difficult. Here, we find that a key predictor of this dipole pattern is the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO, tropical winds above 10 km).

Responses of Arctic sea ice to stratospheric ozone depletion.

The Arctic has experienced several extreme springtime stratospheric ozone depletion events over the past four decades, particularly in 1997, 2011 and 2020. However, the impact of this stratospheric ozone depletion on the climate system remains poorly understood. Here we show that the stratospheric ozone depletion causes significant reductions in the sea ice concentration (SIC) and the sea ice thickness (SIT) over the Kara Sea, Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea from spring to summer.

A commentary of "Antarctic ozone layer is gradually recovering" in 10 remarkable discoveries from 2020 in .

In the mid-1980s, scientists discovered a spring atmospheric ozone hole over Antarctica, revealing the threat of human-made ozone-depleting substances to the atmosphere. The Antarctic ozone hole located 10 to 20 km above sea level, also affects the circulation of the atmosphere in the southern hemisphere, which in turn affects the global climate. One of its most noticeable effects is that the westerly jet in summer begins to move to the poles.

Increasing trend of lightning activity in the South Asia region.

Lightning is an important natural source of wildfires and oxynitride, and hence significantly influences ecological systems and atmospheric chemistry. Here, we choose South Asia, an important region for global water reallocation and global climate changes, to examine lightning variations based on the longest existing lightning dataset from the OTD/LIS observations. We identify a clear increase in lightning density in the research region, increasing at a rate of 0.

Indo-Pacific warm pool area expansion, Modoki activity, and tropical cold-point tropopause temperature variations.

The tropical cold-point tropopause temperature (CPTT), a potentially important indicator of global climate change, is of particular importance for understanding changes in stratospheric water vapor levels. Since the 1980s, the tropical CPTT has shown not only interannual variations, but also a decreasing trend. However, the factors controlling the variations in the tropical CPTT since the 1980s remain elusive.