http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2018GL077098
Plain Language SummaryThe stratosphere is a layer of the atmosphere far from the Earth’ssurface (10–50 km above the surface), but changes in stratospheric circulation, particularly events knownas sudden stratospheric warmings, affect the weather and climate at the surface. By flattening individualmountain regions in a climate model that extends from the Earth’s surface far past the stratosphere, westudy the effects of mountains on stratospheric circulation and the frequency of sudden stratosphericwarming events. We find that the presence of the Mongolian mountains weakens the stratospheric jet by athird of its strength and creates 6 times more warming events as there would be without these mountains.The impact of the Mongolian mountains is about twice as large as the impact of the larger and moreexpansive Tibetan plateau and Himalaya. Mountains are a source of planetary-scale atmospheric wavesthat propagate upward into the stratosphere; we findthat the mountain effect on the stratosphere is largelybecause the mountains alter the pathway that all waves take as they propagate toward the stratosphere,through the influence the mountains have on circulation lower down in the atmosphere. We find similaranomalous wave propagation during sudden warming events in the model and observation
