Abstract. Major, sudden midwinter stratospheric warmings (SSWs) are large and rapid temperature increases in the winter polar stratosphere are associated with a complete reversal of the climatological westerly winds (i.e., the polar vortex). These extreme events can have substantial impacts on winter surface climate, including increased frequency of cold air outbreaks over North America and Eurasia and anomalous warming over Greenland and eastern Canada. Here we present a SSW Compendium (SSWC), a new database that documents the evolution of the stratosphere, troposphere, and surface conditions 60 days prior to and after SSWs for the period 1958-2014. The SSWC comprises data from six different reanalysis products: MERRA2
Initial data from the Formosa Satellite‐7/Constellation Observing System for Meteorology Ionosphere and Climate (FORMOSAT‐7/COSMIC‐2, hereafter C2), a recently launched equatorial constellation of six satellites carrying advanced radio occultation receivers, exhibit high signal‐to‐noise ratio, precision, and accuracy, and the ability to provide high vertical resolution profiles of bending angles and refractivity, which contain information on temperature and water vapor in the challenging tropical atmosphere. After an initial calibration/validation phase, over 100,000 soundings of bending angles and refractivity that passed quality control in October 2019 are compared with independent data, including radiosondes, model forecasts, and analyses. The comparisons show that C2 data meet expectations of high accuracy, precision, and capability to detect superrefraction. When fully operational, the C2 satellites are expected to produce ~5,000 soundings per day, providing freely available observations that will enable improved forecasts of weather, including tropical cyclones, and weather, space weather, and climate research.
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