Climatology and Changes of Extratropical Cyclone Activity: Comparison of ERA-40 with NCEP–NCAR Reanalysis for 1958–2001

Wang, Xiaolan L.; Swail, Val R.; Zwiers, Francis W.

doi:10.1175/jcli3781.1

Cited by 247 publications

(257 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Again, it is not self-evident if this is an indication of the better quality of the WS10 data in the recent period compared to the past period or if this reflects the changes between the recent and past period. The second SLP and WS10 patterns seem to reflect the monthly mean position of the storm tracks and increase toward the end of the reanalysis period which is consistent with the observed northern shift of storms tracks in the recent period (Schneidereit et al 2005;Wang et al 2006).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

“…On one hand, with an increase in the NAOI and the mean wind speed from the 1960s to the mid-1990s, the extreme wind speeds are expected to rise. On the other hand, there are studies that show a trend in shifting of the North Atlantic storm track northwards in the past decades, which causes a trend of decreasing storms in the southern part of northern Europe (Schneidereit et al 2005;Wang et al 2006). The extreme winds can be characterized by different criteria, such as the occurrence of wind speeds exceeding a threshold (e.g., Weisse et al 2005) or wind speeds at certain high percentiles, such as for example the 90 percentile (Pryor and Barthelmie 2003;Matulla et al 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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North Sea near-surface wind climate and its relation to the large-scale circulation patterns

Sušelj

Sood

Heinemann

2009

Theor Appl Climatol

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The North Sea 10-m wind speed (WS10) climate is compared and related to circulation patterns based on the sea level pressure (SLP) extracted from three reanalysis and one high-resolution model dataset. The mean magnitude and the trends of WS10 depend considerably on the selected reanalysis. The variability of WS10 among the three reanalysis datasets is highly correlated in the recent period but less so in the past period . The WS10 over the North Sea is well represented by the relatively low reanalysis resolution when compared to the high-resolution WS10 model data partially owing to the high spatial correlation of WS10. Exceptions are observed only at the coastal areas. The dominant mode of WS10 explains coherent variability of WS10 over the North Sea and is related to a SLP pattern similar to the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO). The increase of the magnitude of the dominant WS10 pattern is related to the increase of the magnitude of the NAO-like SLP pattern from 1960s to mid1990s. The second dominant WS10 pattern-a dipole in WS10 to the north and south of Great Britain-is related to the differences in SLP between Scandinavia and Iceland.The relation between the second WS10 and SLP patterns is more prominent in the recent period. The extreme WS10 in the German Bight is related to the low SLP over Scandinavia. The extreme WS10 is strongly increasing from the early 1980s to the beginning of 1990s, which is not observed in the corresponding SLP time series over Scandinavia.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

North Sea near-surface wind climate and its relation to the large-scale circulation patterns

Sušelj

Sood

Heinemann

2009

Theor Appl Climatol

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“…Some authors use the central MSLP (Gulev et al, 2001;Maheras et al, 2001;Lambert et al, 2002). Others prefer the pressure gradient around the cyclone centre (Nielsen and Dole, 1992;Trigo et al, 1999;Sickmöller et al, 2000), the laplacian of MSLP or the vorticity (Serreze et al, 1997;Wang et al, 2006). As the laplacian of MSLP or the vorticity are very dependent on the spatial resolution of the fields, Simmonds and Keay (2000) scaled the MSLP laplacian (∇ 2 p) with the square of mean cyclone radius (R), defined as cyclone depth D (= 1/4∇ 2 pR 2 ).…”

Section: Detection Of Surface Cyclonesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climatology of Mediterranean cyclones using the ERA‐40 dataset

Campins

Genovés

Picornell

et al. 2011

Intl Journal of Climatology

157

165

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ABSTRACT:The generation of cyclone climatologies has recently received a renewed interest. Cyclones are closely related to the climate of certain regions, and thus, their variability is one of the key points in current climate research. The Mediterranean is a region with high density of cyclones, but due to its location and its particular morphology, cyclones are subject to large spatial and seasonal variability. Moreover, some cyclones are related to hazardous weather events, in particular, heavy precipitation and strong winds. Improved knowledge of Mediterranean cyclones would contribute to the improvement of the forecasts of such damaging events. In this study, objective detection and tracking algorithms are used on the ERA-40 reanalysis to derive a climatology of surface cyclones for the Mediterranean region. The detection algorithm is also applied at various vertical levels, characterizing the three-dimensional structure of the cyclones, and allowing to derive their vertical thickness. The relatively high spatial resolution, but mainly the long period (45 years) makes the ERA-40 reanalysis especially suitable for the generation of a cyclone climatology. The aim of this study is twofold. First, a detailed description of the Mediterranean surface cyclones is obtained. This includes the spatial and seasonal variability and some of their main individual features, like the intensity, size, vertical thickness and life cycle. Moreover, some regions with a large cyclogenetic frequency are studied in detail. Second, the results of the present climatology are compared with many other studies. The qualitative comparison indicates a general agreement with most of previous climatologies. However, as a consequence of the ERA-40 resolution, the comparison with high-resolution cyclone datasets shows a shortcoming related to the detection of small cyclones. Nevertheless, it is concluded that the current climatology depicts a comprehensive view of the synoptic and sub-synoptic cyclonic activities in the Mediterranean.

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“…Reanalysis wind and wave data sets have advantage over in situ and remotely sensed observations because they resolve multiscale processes by their high spatial and temporal resolution [Semedo et al, 2011;Rascle and Ardhuin, 2013]. This allows more intricate studies of the climate impacts from extratropical cyclones to nearshore processes [e.g., Wang et al, 2006;Bromirski et al, 2013]. The 30-plus years of reanalysis data have enabled studies of inter-annual climate cycles [Fan et al, 2012;Stopa et al, 2013a].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Periodicity and patterns of ocean wind and wave climate

Stopa

Cheung

2014

JGR Oceans

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The Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) provides a wealth of information spanning 1979-2009 for investigation of ocean wind and wave climate. Preprocessing of the data is necessary to remove the dominant seasonal signals and to create time series of semimonthly averaged wind speed and significant wave height over a 0.5 global grid. We perform an empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis to extract the dominant space-time patterns. The results for the three major ocean basins show strong zonal structures in the winds and saturation of the swells corroborating prior works with various data sets. We reexamine the CFSR data in the frequency domain to identify periodic signals associated with published climate indices. The Fourier transform of the preprocessed time series generates spectra ranging from 1 month to 15 years period for an EOF analysis. The results demonstrate the spatial structures and periods of climate phenomena. The Arctic Oscillation dominates the Atlantic basin with a broad range of intra-annual signals off the European coasts. The Indian and Pacific Oceans are strongly influenced by inter-annual cycles of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Antarctica Oscillation. The Indian Ocean also has strong intra-annual components ranging from 50 to 80 days period. The ENSO proves to be a ubiquitous signal around the globe, and in particular, saturates the Pacific with strong influences in the equatorial region and the Southern Hemisphere Westerlies. A commonality of all basins is that the magnitude and the spatial structure of the intra-annual and inter-annual signals are similar suggesting a wide range of periods in each of the climate cycles examined.

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Climatology and Changes of Extratropical Cyclone Activity: Comparison of ERA-40 with NCEP–NCAR Reanalysis for 1958–2001

Cited by 247 publications

References 38 publications

North Sea near-surface wind climate and its relation to the large-scale circulation patterns

North Sea near-surface wind climate and its relation to the large-scale circulation patterns

Climatology of Mediterranean cyclones using the ERA‐40 dataset

Periodicity and patterns of ocean wind and wave climate

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