\n<\/p>\n
A rare rise in stratospheric temperatures over Antarctica could influence weather into summer, with previous events driving hotter and drier conditions for south-east Australia.<\/p>\n
The phenomenon \u2013 called sudden stratospheric warming \u2013 is extremely unusual in the southern hemisphere.<\/p>\n
There have only been three moderate to major events in the past 45 years \u2013 in 1988, 2002 and 2019 \u2013 a Bureau of Meteorology spokesperson said, with the latter contributing to a worsening of the black summer bushfires.<\/p>\n
In early September this year, air temperatures 30km above the Southern Ocean and Antarctica began to climb, and are now sitting about 30C warmer than average, according to Dr Martin Jucker, a senior lecturer in atmospheric science at the University of New South Wales.<\/p>\n
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\u201cNormally it\u2019s about minus 50C, so now it\u2019s minus 20C \u2013 it\u2019s still pretty cold,\u201d Jucker said.<\/p>\n
The warming is accompanied by a slowdown in the powerful winds above the Earth\u2019s polar regions, called the polar vortex. Usually those winds are about 200km\/h but are now about 100km\/h.<\/p>\n
Those changes are likely to drive warmer and drier weather patterns at the surface, particularly in NSW and Victoria. But the effects this time around are partly unknown, given the Bureau of Meteorology\u2019s forecast for wetter conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there is a balancing act between these very warm ocean temperatures, which would drive wet weather for us, versus the stratosphere, which would drive dry weather,\u201d Jucker said. \u201cWho wins? I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the bureau, weather changes associated with past stratospheric warming events have had their strongest effects in New South Wales and southern Queensland, with increased springtime temperatures and less rainfall.<\/p>\n
Ben Domensino from Weatherzone said the sudden stratospheric warming could influence a climate driver called the southern annular mode. This could increase the chance of abnormally hot days in southern Australia and make drier-than-average conditions over eastern Australia more likely.<\/p>\n
While unusual in the southern hemisphere, sudden stratospheric warming events are more common in the northern hemisphere, occurring about six times a decade.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In Australia, these events have greatest impact when they occur in spring.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the current stratospheric warming over the South Pole is substantial, the degree of warming is currently weaker than that which occurred in the spring 2019 and 2002 events,\u201d the bureau\u2019s spokesperson said.<\/p>\n Jucker said there is one positive from stratospheric warming. As temperatures rise above the threshold for ozone destruction, the size of the ozone hole reduces.<\/p>\n This article was amended on 26 September 2025 to update the number of previous sudden stratospheric warming events in the southern hemisphere from two to three.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A rare rise in stratospheric temperatures over Antarctica could influence weather into summer, with previous events driving hotter and drier conditions for south-east Australia. The phenomenon \u2013 called sudden stratospheric warming \u2013 is extremely unusual in the southern hemisphere. There have only been three moderate to major events in the past 45 years \u2013 in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[14580,14582,346,2029,546,70,109,485,11946,14581,2560,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-23942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-abnormally","9":"tag-antarctica","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australias","12":"tag-days","13":"tag-hit","14":"tag-hot","15":"tag-rare","16":"tag-southeast","17":"tag-sudden","18":"tag-warming","19":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}