Weather models show that a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) event is now ‘likely’ to take place over the next few weeks. The term sudden stratospheric warming refers to what is observed in the stratosphere:- a rapid warming (up to about 50 °C in just a couple of days), between 10 km and 50 km above the earth’s surface. However, the stratospheric sudden warming doesn’t happen every year, and it doesn’t always affect our weather when it does. How does a sudden stratospheric warming occur? How does a Sudden Stratospheric Warming affect our weather?
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