Polar mesospheric ozone loss initiates downward coupling of solar signal in the Northern Hemisphere

Annika Seppälä (), Niilo Kalakoski, Pekka T. Verronen, Daniel R. Marsh, Alexey Yu. Karpechko and Monika E. Szelag
Additional contact information
Annika Seppälä: University of Otago
Niilo Kalakoski: Finnish Meteorological Institute
Pekka T. Verronen: Finnish Meteorological Institute
Daniel R. Marsh: National Center for Atmospheric Research
Alexey Yu. Karpechko: Finnish Meteorological Institute
Monika E. Szelag: Finnish Meteorological Institute

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Solar driven energetic particle precipitation (EPP) is an important factor in polar atmospheric ozone balance and has been linked to ground-level regional climate variability. However, the linking mechanism has remained ambiguous. The observed and simulated ground-level changes start well before the processes from the main candidate, the so-called EPP-indirect effect, would start. Here we show that initial reduction of polar mesospheric ozone and the resulting change in atmospheric heating rapidly couples to dynamics, transferring the signal downwards, shifting the tropospheric jet polewards. This pathway is not constrained to the polar vortex. Rather, a subtropical route initiated by a changing wind shear plays a key role. Our results show that the signal propagates downwards in timescales consistent with observed tropospheric level climatic changes linked to EPP. This pathway, from mesospheric ozone to regional climate, is independent of the EPP-indirect effect, and solves the long-standing mechanism problem for EPP effects on climate.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-55966-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-55966-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-55966-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().