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Stratospheric Processes And their Role in Climate
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| Home | Initiatives | Organisation | Publications | Meetings | Acronyms and Abbreviations | Useful Links |
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Stratospheric Processes And their Role in Climate
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| Home | Initiatives | Organisation | Publications | Meetings | Acronyms and Abbreviations | Useful Links |
Termination of the STRATALERT Reports
Karin Labitzke, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany (labitzke@strat01.met.fu-berlin.de)
In the 1960s the stratospheric midwinter warmings were regarded as an exciting and interesting research problem. The observations taken during a warming were scarce but in great demand, and a much desired aim was to launch meteorological rockets when a warming was developing above a station. For this purpose an advisory system was necessary, such as had been established in the international geophysical community for other phenomena (GEOALERT). Charged by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Stratospheric Research Group of the Freie Universität in Berlin (Germany) got together with their colleagues of the American Weather Bureau and developed a warning system, which was named STRATALERT. It was introduced in 1964 when the IQSY (International Year of the Quiet Sun) began.
The Berlin group was at first responsible for the European space, and later for the whole Northern Hemisphere. It issued a STRATALERT report every day during winter, and a GEOALERT when needed. The alerts were disseminated through the German Weather Service's international net and reached all interested parties. The STRATALERT reports were an essential source of information about what was going on in the stratosphere; information which at that time would not otherwise have been available to many scientists interested in current conditions. Because of this information it was possible to time experiments, for instance, with meteorological rockets, to take place under desired conditions, and local observations could be assimilated and interpreted on the background of a wider field. This information system has served as a basis for decisions made in many large-scale field experiments.
A review and classification of stratospheric warmings can be found in SPARC Newsletter No. 15, (Labitzke and Naujokat, 2000) (http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/SPARC/News15/15_Labitzke.html).
The 2003/2004 winter was the last year for STRATALERT. After 41 years we are sorry to announce that we cannot continue this timely warning system in its old format and we could not find a successor. However, those interested in the daily development of the stratospheric circulation can find analyses and different stratospheric parameters based on the ECMWF-data on the FUB web site. (http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/winterdiagnostics). The general evaluation is, however, left to the user.
Additional available data links are (amongst others):
US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (CPC/NCEP): http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/index.html.
Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA): http://okdk.kishou.go.jp/products/clisys/STRAT/index.html