A dynamical systems approach to studying midlatitude weather extremes

Messori, Gabriele; Caballero, Rodrigo; Faranda, Davide

doi:10.1002/2017gl072879

Cited by 69 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The intensified zonal flow seen in the DWB+ period and the associated westerly advection penetrates into the continent resulting in heightened rates of warm extremes over Eastern Europe. Wintertime warm extremes can have significant impact on local economies by modulating snow and water availability and crop yields (e.g., Gooding et al 2003;Beniston 2005), and have previously been linked to similar large-scale circulation anomalies over the North Atlantic (Messori et al 2017). A similarly large change is seen in the occurrence of extreme 10-m wind episodes and in wind destructiveness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

On the low-frequency variability of wintertime Euro-Atlantic planetary wave-breaking

et al. 2018

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Planetary wave-breaking can lead to large-scale atmospheric circulation anomalies and favour high-impact weather occurrences. For example, the simultaneous occurrence of anti-cyclonic wave-breaking to the south of the North Atlantic jet and cyclonic wave-breaking to the north, here termed double wave-breaking, has been linked to heightened frequencies of explosive cyclones in the Atlantic basin and destructive windstorms over Western and Continental Europe. The present study analyses the long-term temporal variability of wintertime cyclonic and anti-cyclonic wave-breaking, and the resulting double wave-breaking, in the North Atlantic. We use reanalysis data, proxy reconstructions of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and a 1000-year coupled global climate model equilibrium simulation under constant pre-industrial forcing. The wave-breaking wavelet spectra highlight a significant ultra-centennial variability in double wave-breaking frequency, which is largely mirrored in the variability of the NAO. However, we note that the NAO wavelet spectra in the different datasets display significant discrepancies. The low-frequency wave-breaking variability is reflected in long-term anomalies of the large-scale atmospheric circulation in the Euro-Atlantic sector. The 100-year periods with the most and least double wave-breaking occurrences display significant and opposite anomalies in both upper and lower-level wind, as well as in the frequency of extreme temperature events and in the magnitude of wind destructiveness over Europe. The latter broadly resembles the wind destructiveness anomalies associated with individual double wave-breaking instances in reanalysis data. The existence of low-frequency variability in an atmospheric pattern related to high-impact weather events has important implications for the study and interpretation of climate change projections and of possible future NAO changes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

On the low-frequency variability of wintertime Euro-Atlantic planetary wave-breaking

et al. 2018

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“…Indeed, the critical transition to a turbulent state has exponents comparable to those of directed percolation, concerning, for example, the scaling of the number of active sites in terms of distance to the critical governing parameter of the transition. Such an analysis also shows the importance of large-scale zonal flows (Shih et al, 2016) of critical layers (Park et al, 2018), as well as that of regeneration self-sustaining cycles in such flows (Kawahara & Kida, 2001;Waleffe, 1997) with, citing Mckeon (2017), "the importance of scale interactions in sustaining wall turbulence through the nonlinear term. "…”

Section: 1029/2018ea000432mentioning

confidence: 98%

Helicity Dynamics, Inverse, and Bidirectional Cascades in Fluid and Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence: A Brief Review

Pouquet

Rosenberg

Stawarz

et al. 2019

Earth and Space Science

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We briefly review helicity dynamics, inverse and bidirectional cascades in fluid and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, with an emphasis on the latter. The energy of a turbulent system, an invariant in the nondissipative case, is transferred to small scales through nonlinear mode coupling. Fifty years ago, it was realized that, for a two‐dimensional fluid, energy cascades instead to larger scales and so does magnetic excitation in MHD. However, evidence obtained recently indicates that, in fact, for a range of governing parameters, there are systems for which their ideal invariants can be transferred, with constant fluxes, to both the large scales and the small scales, as for MHD or rotating stratified flows, in the latter case including quasi‐geostrophic forcing. Such bidirectional, split, cascades directly affect the rate at which mixing and dissipation occur in these flows in which nonlinear eddies interact with fast waves with anisotropic dispersion laws, due, for example, to imposed rotation, stratification, or uniform magnetic fields. The directions of cascades can be obtained in some cases through the use of phenomenological arguments, one of which we derive here following classical lines in the case of the inverse magnetic helicity cascade in electron MHD. With more highly resolved data sets stemming from large laboratory experiments, high‐performance computing, and in situ satellite observations, machine learning tools are bringing novel perspectives to turbulence research. Such algorithms help devise new explicit subgrid‐scale parameterizations, which in turn may lead to enhanced physical insight, including in the future in the case of these new bidirectional cascades.

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“…In dynamical systems terms, these fields represent projections of the full phase-space dynamics onto specific subspaces, called Poincaré sections. In Faranda et al (2016) and Messori et al (2017) we have shown that d and θ can be used to characterize regional-scale atmospheric fields and further provide information on the predictability linked to a given atmospheric state. It is therefore important to investigate these indicators at different spatial scales to fully understand the insights they can provide.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamical properties and extremes of Northern Hemisphere climate fields over the past 60 years

Faranda

Messori

Alvarez-Castro

et al. 2017

Nonlin. Processes Geophys.

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Abstract. Atmospheric dynamics are described by a set of partial differential equations yielding an infinite-dimensional phase space. However, the actual trajectories followed by the system appear to be constrained to a finite-dimensional phase space, i.e. a strange attractor. The dynamical properties of this attractor are difficult to determine due to the complex nature of atmospheric motions. A first step to simplify the problem is to focus on observables which affect -or are linked to phenomena which affect -human welfare and activities, such as sea-level pressure, 2 m temperature, and precipitation frequency. We make use of recent advances in dynamical systems theory to estimate two instantaneous dynamical properties of the above fields for the Northern Hemisphere: local dimension and persistence. We then use these metrics to characterize the seasonality of the different fields and their interplay. We further analyse the large-scale anomaly patterns corresponding to phase-space extremes -namely time steps at which the fields display extremes in their instantaneous dynamical properties. The analysis is based on the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data, over the period 1948-2013. The results show that (i) despite the high dimensionality of atmospheric dynamics, the Northern Hemisphere sea-level pressure and temperature fields can on average be described by roughly 20 degrees of freedom; (ii) the precipitation field has a higher dimensionality; and (iii) the seasonal forcing modulates the variability of the dynamical indicators and affects the occurrence of phase-space extremes. We further identify a number of robust correlations between the dynamical properties of the different variables.

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A dynamical systems approach to studying midlatitude weather extremes

Cited by 69 publications

References 34 publications

On the low-frequency variability of wintertime Euro-Atlantic planetary wave-breaking

On the low-frequency variability of wintertime Euro-Atlantic planetary wave-breaking

Helicity Dynamics, Inverse, and Bidirectional Cascades in Fluid and Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence: A Brief Review

Dynamical properties and extremes of Northern Hemisphere climate fields over the past 60 years

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