Trabajo presentado en la Stratosphere-troposphere Processes And their Role in Climate General Assembly, celebrada en Tokyo (Japón) del 1 al 5 de octubre de 2018Major sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs) represent one of the most abrupt phenomena of the boreal
wintertime stratospheric variability, and constitute the clearest example of the stratosphere-troposphere
coupling. A good representation of SSWs in climate models is required to reduce their biases and uncertainties
in future projections. The ability of models to reproduce these phenomena is usually assessed with just one
reanalysis. However, the number of reanalyses has increased in the last decade and their own biases can affect
the model evaluation.
In this study, we compare the representation of the main aspects of SSWs across reanalyses. The
examination of their main characteristics in the pre- and post-satellite periods reveals that reanalyses behave
very similarly in both periods. However, the spread of results is wider in the pre-satellite period than afterwards,
particularly for the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis. The good agreement among reanalyses is also found for triggering
mechanisms, tropospheric precursors and surface fingerprint and all datasets reproduce similarly the specific
signatures of wavenumber 1 (WN1) and wavenumber 2 (WN2) SSWs. Differences in blocking activity prior to
WN1 and WN2 events between reanalyses are much smaller than between blocking definitions.Peer reviewe