Total ozone as a possible predictor of extreme weather events

Abstract

Analysis of the monthly mean interannual variations of the total ozone (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS, TOMS‐Meteor 3)), surface air temperature (National Centres for Environmental Prediction and Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis) and their relations is conducted by means of the singular value decomposition (SVD) for each month December–March 1979–1994. It is shown that the total ozone increase (decrease) occurs almost over those geographical regions where cooling (warming) is observed both on the interannual and longer time‐scales Strong non‐local correlations were indicated between the total ozone changes over England in January and surface temperature variations in western Siberia, southern European Russia and the Azores in February. Similar relations occur for the total ozone (February) and surface temperature (March) changes. These results can be used for the empirical extended‐range forecasts of the anomalously cold winters in Europe and Russia using the total ozone data. Possible mechanisms for this non‐local linkage and its relation to the Arctic Oscillation are discussed.