Abstract
This article gives an overview of how the Earth's atmosphere responds to external forcing from charged particles of solar or magnetospheric origin. These particles enter the atmosphere in the polar regions, resulting in enhanced production of ozone depleting radicals. The resulting ozone depletion is part of natural variability, and takes place above the Earth's ozone layer. While the changes take place above the ozone layer, due to ozone's important role in regulating heating and cooling throughout the atmosphere, the particle precipitation effects are able to influence the dynamical state of the atmosphere. Ultimately this affects regional scale variability, though well known atmospheric phenomena such as the Annular Modes.