Weather and Climate Dynamics
Weather and Climate Dynamics
WCD
Articles | Volume 6, issue 3
Articles | Volume 6, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-927-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-927-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 6, issue 3
Research article
 | 
09 Sep 2025
Research article |  | 09 Sep 2025

Climatology, long-term variability and trend of resolved gravity wave drag in the stratosphere revealed by ERA5

Zuzana Procházková, Radek Zajíček, and Petr Šácha

Data sets

ERA5 gravity wave fluxes and drag on subdomains and in zonal mean Zuzana Procházková et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15473686

Monthly mean NAO index since January 1950 NOAA Climate Prediction Center https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.shtml

Die Quasi-Biennial-Oszillation (QBO) Datenreihe Freie Universität Berlin https://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/met/ag/strat/produkte/qbo/index.html

Multivariate ENSO Index Version 2 (MEI.v2) NOAA Physical Science Laboratory https://www.psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei/data/meiv2.data

SILSO Sunspot Number V2.0 Frédéric Clette and Laure Lefèvre https://doi.org/10.24414/qnza-ac80

Model code and software

prochazz/era5gws: Gravity Wave Fluxes and Drag. v1.0 Zuzana Procházková et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17020639

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Short summary
In this work, we compute and analyze resolved gravity wave drag in high-resolution reanalysis data. Studying gravity waves with a realistic dataset helps us to understand them better and potentially improve climate projections. Part of our results supports a key hypothesis governing the vertical distribution of parameterized gravity wave drag in climate models; however, we also provide evidence of the strong influence of horizontal wave propagation, a mechanism that is currently missing in the models.
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