Responses of Lower Stratospheric water vapor to Regional Sea Surface Temperature Changes

Abstract The variability of stratospheric water vapor (SWV) plays a crucial role in stratospheric chemistry and the Earth's energy budget, strongly influenced by sea surface temperature (SST). In this study, we systematically investigate the response of low stratospheric water vapor (LSWV) to regional sea surface temperature changes using idealized SST patch experiments within a climate model. The results indicate that LSWV is most sensitive to tropical sea surface temperature, with the strongest response occurring in late autumn and early winter. Warming of the tropical Indian Ocean and western Pacific leads to stratospheric drying, while warming of the tropical Atlantic and eastern Pacific results in stratospheric moistening. The drying impact on LSWV due to warming in the western Pacific Ocean exceeds the wet effect in the Eastern Pacific Ocean by approximately 60%. The variations in tropical SST influence LSWV by modulating the temperature at the tropical tropopause layer especially over the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool through Matsuno-Gill responses. Furthermore, the response of LSWV to tropical SST changes exhibits nonnegligible nonlinearity, which indicates the importance of nonlinearity in determining the LSWV response to global surface warming.