{"id":2,"date":"2024-10-08T08:52:43","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T08:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teams.issibern.ch\/info-qbo\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2026-09-24T11:22:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T11:22:45","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/teams.issibern.ch\/info-qbo\/","title":{"rendered":"Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

The Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) is the main source of year-to-year variability in the tropical stratosphere with far reaching teleconnections to other parts of the climate system from extratropical variability to tropical convection. Historically it has exhibited a remarkably regular period of ~28 months, but recent, unprecedented disruptions indicate this periodicity may be fragile. It has long been recognized that radiative and dynamical feedbacks from stratospheric ozone can impact the QBO but a clear mechanistic description is still lacking. Moreover, s<\/span>imulating a realistic QBO in climate models is still challenging and many numerical models only include a simplified version by nudging their tropical winds to observations.<\/span>The ozone feedback on the QBO has been examined mainly in the context of recent historical climate, with one recent study on the future changes in response to an increase in carbon dioxide. A review of the literature reveals <\/span>large uncertainties<\/span><\/i> in the magnitude of the ozone feedback on both the QBO period and amplitude. A new international model intercomparison project, QUOCA<\/a>, has recently been launched to study ozone\u2013QBO feedbacks with data expected by the end of 2024. <\/span><\/p>\r\n

The main aim of this team is to use high-resolution satellite observations of tropical stratospheric temperature and composition to assess the representation of ozone-QBO feedbacks and associated dynamical processes in these new model runs.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\r\n

<\/i>The outcome of this activity will improve our understanding of the interactions between composition and the QBO, contributing to improving the fidelity of future model projections of the QBO and its teleconnections.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

If you are interested in this project or the QUOCA model runs, please feel free to get in touch with us.<\/p>\r\n

The proposal for this project can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

Project summary<\/span><\/i><\/p>\r\n

The second in person team meeting in June 2026 highlighted major advances in the modelling of ozone effects on the Quasi-biennial Oscillation (QBO) in the stratosphere. We mapped out all the possible pathways by which the feedbacks can occur and have gathered the analytical models, numerical tools and the satellite datasets needed to enable testing of these mechanisms. The team split into 4 subgroups with overlapping members each focussing on tackling a different piece of the problem, organized around: 1) New approaches to quantifying the strength of the circulation related to the QBO, especially given that it cannot be observed directly; .2) A collective set of QBO metrics used to define its amplitude, period, height and latitude structure and a respective software package to enable its calculation by the broader research community.\u00a0 3) A systematic plan for application of the software package to the best available satellite data to provide a \u201creference QBO\u201d in all quantities of interest; and 4) A hierarchy of numerical models that is not yet complete at this stage, but has significantly progressed, and is expected to be ready for generating results within the coming months.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

In summary, this work will benefit the wider community by setting down some clear recommendations about how to assess zone-QBO relationships in climate models using satellite observations and by providing mechanistic insight into whether models are capturing these relationships for the right reasons. Our recommendations will be immediately applicable to experiments that are currently being conducted in support of international modeling activities examining QBO behavior in present and future climates such as the QUOCA and QBOi projects.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) is the main source of year-to-year variability in the tropical stratosphere with far reaching teleconnections to other parts of the climate system from extratropical variability to tropical convection. Historically it has exhibited a remarkably regular period of ~28 months, but recent, unprecedented disruptions indicate this periodicity may be fragile. It has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teams.issibern.ch\/info-qbo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teams.issibern.ch\/info-qbo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teams.issibern.ch\/info-qbo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teams.issibern.ch\/info-qbo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teams.issibern.ch\/info-qbo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/teams.issibern.ch\/info-qbo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/teams.issibern.ch\/info-qbo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teams.issibern.ch\/info-qbo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}