Circulation weather types as a tool in atmospheric, climate, and environmental research

Abstract

Classifications of circulation weather systems have a long history in meteorology and climatology. Starting with manual classifications (Hess and Brezowsky, 1952;Lamb, 1972) over specific regions of the globe, these tools (generally called "catalogs of synoptic types") were restricted mainly to weather forecasting and historical climate studies.In the last decades, the advance of computing resources and the availability of datasets have fostered the development of fast and objective methods that process large amounts of data. Many climatological studies and applications require these data to be as simplified as possible; this is often achieved by analyzing gridded datasets (usually sea level pressure or geopotential height at different levels), and grouping the data into a relatively small number of distinct categories. Since these types are based on meteorological fields observed at a specific instant, they are also called Eulerian classifications.Several classification methods of circulation weather types have been developed, and are currently used in a wide range of applications (Huth et al., 2008(Huth et al., , 2010Philipp et al., 2010). In addition, in 2002, Sheridan stated that the "Synoptic weather-typing, or the classification of weather conditions or patterns into categories, continues to be popular, and numerous methods have been developed over the past century" (Sheridan, 2002). The increasing interdisciplinary use of circulation weather types in Europe became clear when the European project "Harmonization and Applications of Weather Types Classifications for European Regions-COST733, " where a wide range of classification schemes for different spatial domains were developed and compared within the scope of distinct applications. (Huth et al

Circulation type classifications for temperature and precipitation stratification in Italy

“…Automatic algorithms for circulation type classifications (CTCs) have also allowed the variability of the atmospheric circulation over Europe during the last centuries to be explored (Beck et al ., ; Philipp et al ., ; Jones et al ., ; Ramos et al ., ). These studies stress that changes in weather type frequencies can explain an important amount of temperature and precipitation variability; however, it must be taken into account that recent global warming and non‐stationary processes in the connection between atmospheric circulation and surface climate have shown to vary internal properties of some weather types (the so‐called within‐type variations, e.g.…”

Rain Microstructure Parameters Vary with Large-Scale Weather Conditions in Lausanne, Switzerland

“…Weather type classification has proven to be useful in understanding climatic processes and the link between the variability of local weather conditions and atmospheric circulations [35,36]. Weather types represent the atmospheric conditions that prevail over a large area and remain relatively stable for several days (a minimum of three days) [37].…”

Spatio‐temporal variations of cloud fraction based on circulation types in the Iberian Peninsula

“…The classification of atmospheric patterns has become an important topic in climate studies over recent years (Huth et al, 2008;Philipp, 2009;Philipp et al, 2010;Ramos et al, 2015;Huth et al, 2016). In this study, a classification taking into account SLP data from NCEP-DOE Reanalysis 2 is used.…”