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Abstract Early reanalyses are less than optimal for investigating the regional effects of ozone depletion on Southern Hemisphere (SH) high-latitude climate because the availability of satellite sounder data from 1979 significantly improved their accuracy in data sparse regions, leading to a coincident inhomogeneity. To determine whether current reanalyses are better at SH high-latitudes in the pre-satellite era, here we examine the capabilities of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) fifth generation reanalysis (ERA5), the Twentieth Century Reanalysis version 3 (20CRv3), and the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) 55-year reanalysis (JRA-55) to reproduce and help explain the pronounced change in the relationship between the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and Antarctic near-surface air temperatures (SAT) between 1950 and 1979 (EARLY period) and 1980–2020 (LATE period). We find that ERA5 best reproduces Antarctic SAT in the EARLY period and is also the most homogeneous reanalysis across the EARLY and LATE periods. ERA5 and 20CRv3 provide a good representation of SAM in both periods with JRA-55 only similarly skilful in the LATE period. Nevertheless, all three reanalyses show the marked change in Antarctic SAM-SAT relationships between the two periods. In particular, ERA5 and 20CRv3 demonstrate the observed switch in the sign of the SAM-SAT relationship in the Antarctic Peninsula: analysis of changes in SAM structure and associated meridional wind anomalies reveal that in these reanalyses positive SAM is linked to cold southerly winds during the EARLY period and warm northerly winds in the LATE period, thus providing a simple explanation for the regional SAM-SAT relationship reversal. 

The relationship between Southern Hemisphere middle and high-latitude regions has made it possible to generate observationally-based Antarctic pressure reconstructions throughout the 20th century, even though routinely collected observations for this continent only began around 1957. While nearly all reconstructions inherently assume stability in these relationships through time and in the absence of direct observations, this stationarity constraint can be fully tested in a model setting. Seasonal pressure reconstructions based on the principal component regression (PCR) method spanning 1905–2013 are done entirely within the framework of the Community Atmospheric version 5 (CAM5) model in this study in order to evaluate this assumption, test the robustness of the PCR procedure for Antarctic pressure reconstructions and to evaluate the CAM5 model. Notably, the CAM5 reconstructions outperformed the observationally-based reconstruction in every season except the austral summer. Other tests indicate that relationships between Antarctic pressure and pressure across the Southern Hemisphere remain stable throughout the 20th century in CAM5. In contrast, 20th century reanalyses all display marked changes in mid-to-high latitude pressure relationships in the early 20th century. Overall, comparisons indicate both the CAM5 model and the pressure reconstructions evaluated here are reliable estimates of Antarctic pressure throughout the 20th century, with the largest differences between the two resulting from differences in the underlying reconstruction predictor networks and not from changes in the model experiments.