@article{24b81f16e1704f79827d7c2f8691c3c7,
title = "Australian wildfires cause the largest stratospheric warming since Pinatubo and extends the lifetime of the Antarctic ozone hole",
abstract = "Global mean lower stratosphere temperatures rose abruptly in January 2020 reaching values not experienced since the early 1990s. Anomalously high lower stratospheric temperatures were recorded for 4 months at highly statistically significant levels. Here, we use a combination of satellite and surface-based remote sensing observations to derive a time-series of stratospheric biomass burning aerosol optical depths originating from intense SouthEastern Australian wildfires and use these aerosol optical depths in a state-of-the-art climate model. We show that the S.E. Australian wildfires are the cause of this lower stratospheric warming. We also investigate the radiatively-driven dynamical response to the observed stratospheric ozone perturbation and find a significant strengthening of the springtime Antarctic polar vortex suggesting that biomass burning aerosols play a significant role in the observed anomalous longevity of the ozone hole in 2020.",
keywords = "Aerosols, Antarctic Regions, Atmosphere/analysis, Australia, Ozone/analysis, Ozone Depletion, Wildfires",
author = "Lilly Damany-Pearce and Ben Johnson and Alice Wells and Martin Osborne and James Allan and Claire Belcher and Andy Jones and Jim Haywood",
note = "Funding Information: JH, LDP, JA and CB would like to acknowledge support from the NERC funded SASSO standard grant (NE/S00212X/1). JH would like to acknowledge support from the NERC funded EXTEND project (NE/W003880/1). BJ, JH and AJ were supported by the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by BEIS. AW was funded via a UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Environmental Intelligence PhD studentship hosted by the University of Exeter. Patric Seifert of The Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) is acknowledged for making the AERONET measurements utilized in this study. Funding Information: JH, LDP, JA and CB would like to acknowledge support from the NERC funded SASSO standard grant (NE/S00212X/1). JH would like to acknowledge support from the NERC funded EXTEND project (NE/W003880/1). BJ, JH and AJ were supported by the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by BEIS. AW was funded via a UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Environmental Intelligence PhD studentship hosted by the University of Exeter. Patric Seifert of The Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) is acknowledged for making the AERONET measurements utilized in this study. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022, The Author(s).",
year = "2022",
month = aug,
day = "25",
doi = "10.1038/s41598-022-15794-3",
language = "English",
volume = "12",
journal = "Scientific Reports",
issn = "2045-2322",
publisher = "Nature Research",
number = "1",
}
