Effects of the tropospheric large‐scale circulation on European winter temperatures during the period of amplified Arctic warming

Vihma, Timo; Graversen, Rune; Chen, Linling; Handorf, Dörthe; Skific, Natasa; Francis, Jennifer A.; Tyrrell, Nicholas; Rj, Hall; Hanna, Edward; Uotila, Petteri; Dethloff, Klaus; Karpechko, Alexey Yu.; Björnsson, Halldór; Overland, James E.

doi:10.1002/joc.6225

Cited by 52 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 89 publications

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“…Opposite to AO and NAO, the positive phase of the SCA (Barnston and Livezey, ) represents a large‐scale atmospheric state with a high‐pressure ridge, typically a blocking high, over the Scandinavian peninsula. This pattern favours a meridional storm track, steering cyclones into the Fram Strait rather than into the southern Barents Sea and northern Scandinavia (Bueh and Nakamura, ; Vihma et al ., ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Trends in cyclones in the high‐latitude North Atlantic during 1979–2016

Wickström

Jonassen

Vihma

et al. 2019

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

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We report an increase in winter (DJF) cyclone densities in the areas around Svalbard and in northwestern Barents Sea and a decrease in cyclone densities in southeastern Barents Sea during 1979–2016. Despite high interannual variability, the trends are significant at the 90% confidence level. The changes appear as a result of a shift into a more meridional winter storm track in the high‐latitude North Atlantic, associated with a positive trend in the Scandinavian Pattern. A significant decrease in the Brunt–Väisälä frequency east of Svalbard and a significant increase in the Eady Growth Rate north of Svalbard indicate increased baroclinicity, favouring enhanced cyclone activity in these regions. For the first time, we apply composite analysis to explicitly address regional consequences of these wintertime changes in the high‐latitude North Atlantic. We find a tendency toward a warmer and more moist atmospheric state in the Barents Sea and over Svalbard with increased cyclone activity around Svalbard.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Trends in cyclones in the high‐latitude North Atlantic during 1979–2016

Wickström

Jonassen

Vihma

et al. 2019

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

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“…Following the approach used in previous investigations 12,16 , persistence in this study is assessed by identifying long-duration events (LDEs), defined as cases when the large-scale atmospheric pattern remains static for four or more consecutive days. The size of the matrix was selected to be relatively small, thus ensuring that adjacent patterns were distinct from each other and so consecutive days would be less apt to jump between adjacent patterns that differed little.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies 12 , 16 employed a pattern clustering tool called self-organizing maps (SOMs) to investigate changes in persistence of large-scale weather-regimes. They analyzed representative patterns in 500-hPa geopotential height anomalies over the North Atlantic/Europe 16 and the eastern Pacific/North America 12 to measure the frequency of long-duration events (LDEs), defined as cases when the atmosphere resides in one pattern for four or more consecutive days. Both studies found that LDEs increased (decreased) during the period from 1996 to 2015 relative to 1976 to 1995 in patterns with positive (negative) height anomalies in high latitudes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even more promising is an approach based on large-scale circulation regimes. These studies 12,16 employed a pattern clustering tool called self-organizing maps (SOMs) to investigate changes in persistence of large-scale weatherregimes. They analyzed representative patterns in 500-hPa geopotential height anomalies over the North Atlantic/ Europe 16 and the eastern Pacific/North America 12 to measure the frequency of long-duration events (LDEs), defined as cases when the atmosphere resides in one pattern for four or more consecutive days.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Increased persistence of large-scale circulation regimes over Asia in the era of amplified Arctic warming, past and future

Francis

Skific

Vavrus

2020

Sci Rep

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Extreme weather events in Asia have been occurring with increasing frequency as the globe warms in response to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. Many of these events arise from weather regimes that persist over a region for days or even weeks, resulting in disruptive heatwaves, droughts, flooding, snowfalls, and cold spells. We investigate changes in the persistence of large-scale weather systems through a pattern-recognition approach based on daily 500 hPa geopotential height anomalies over the Asian continent. By tracking consecutive days that the atmosphere resides in a particular pattern, we identify long-duration events (LDEs), defined as lasting longer than three days, and measure their frequency of occurrence over time in each pattern. We find that regimes featuring positive height anomalies in high latitudes are occurring more often as the Arctic warms faster than mid-latitudes, both in the recent past and in model projections for the twenty-first century assuming unabated greenhouse gas emissions. The increased dominance of these patterns corresponds to a higher likelihood of LDEs, suggesting that persistent weather conditions will occur more frequently. By mapping observed temperature and precipitation extremes onto each atmospheric regime, we gain insight into the types of disruptive weather events that will become more prevalent as particular patterns become more common.

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“…Although the ERA-Interim reanalysis is overall superior in describing the Arctic atmospheric environment to other similar global reanalysis products, it contains warm and moist biases in the surface layer (Jakobson et al, 2012;Chaudhuri et al, 2014;Simmons and Poli, 2015;Wang et al, 2019). However, we believe these biases, as well as the relatively coarse resolution, should have minimum impact in the results from the current analyses.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Revisiting the trend in the occurrences of the “warm Arctic–cold Eurasian continent” temperature pattern

Zhong

Sui

et al. 2020

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. The recent increasing trend of “warm Arctic, cold continents” has attracted much attention, but it remains debatable as to what forces are behind this phenomenon. Here, we revisited surface temperature variability over the Arctic and the Eurasian continent by applying the self-organizing-map (SOM) technique to gridded daily surface temperature data. Nearly 40 % of the surface temperature trends are explained by the nine SOM patterns that depict the switch to the current warm Arctic–cold Eurasia pattern at the beginning of this century from the reversed pattern that dominated the 1980s and 1990s. Further, no cause–effect relationship is found between the Arctic sea ice loss and the cold spells in the high-latitude to midlatitude Eurasian continent suggested by earlier studies. Instead, the increasing trend in warm Arctic–cold Eurasia pattern appears to be related to the anomalous atmospheric circulations associated with two Rossby wave trains triggered by rising sea surface temperature (SST) over the central North Pacific and the North Atlantic oceans. On interdecadal timescale, the recent increase in the occurrences of the warm Arctic–cold Eurasia pattern is a fragment of the interdecadal variability of SST over the Atlantic Ocean as represented by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and over the central Pacific Ocean.

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Effects of the tropospheric large‐scale circulation on European winter temperatures during the period of amplified Arctic warming

Cited by 52 publications

References 89 publications

Trends in cyclones in the high‐latitude North Atlantic during 1979–2016

Trends in cyclones in the high‐latitude North Atlantic during 1979–2016

Increased persistence of large-scale circulation regimes over Asia in the era of amplified Arctic warming, past and future

Revisiting the trend in the occurrences of the “warm Arctic–cold Eurasian continent” temperature pattern

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