Major avalanches occurrence at regional scale and related atmospheric circulation patterns in the Eastern Pyrenees

Garcı́a, C.; Martí, Gloria Novel; Oller, Pere; Moner, Ivan; Gavaldà, Jna.; Martínez, Pere; Peña, Juan Carlos

doi:10.1016/j.coldregions.2009.07.009

Cited by 19 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Beniston et al (in press) suggested that the frequency of warm and dry days during winter is the best indicator of snow accumulation in the Swiss Alps. Thus, it is not surprising that the NAO has been identified as an important driver of interannual variability of snowpack in mountain areas including the Pyrenees (López-Moreno and Serrano-Vicente, 2007;García et al, 2009), the Alps (Beniston, 1997;Scherrer and Appenzeller, 2006;Schöner et al, 2009), Romania (Micu, 2009), the Bulgarian Carpathians (Petkova et al, 2004) and in Estonia (Jaagus, 2006). Based on the results of this study the snow in mountain areas of the Iberian Peninsula (the Sierra Nevada, the Cantabrian Mountains, the Central System), and in the Atlas, Pindos and Turkish mountains could also be markedly affected by the winter NAO.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on combined temperature and precipitation winter modes in the Mediterranean mountains: Observed relationships and projections for the 21st century

López‐Moreno

Vicente‐Serrano

Morán-Tejéda

et al. 2011

Global and Planetary Change

250

156

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Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on combined temperature and precipitation winter modes in the Mediterranean mountains: Observed relationships and projections for the 21st century

López‐Moreno

Vicente‐Serrano

Morán-Tejéda

et al. 2011

Global and Planetary Change

250

156

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“…Keylock (2003) first established a connection between the positive phase of NAO and snow avalanches in Iceland, and postulated that the recent rise in NAO could have implications on return periods and runout distances. García et al (2009) and García-Sellés et al (2010) found a negative relationship between avalanche activity and the NAO in the Eastern Pyrenees, but could not identify the process of the NAO governing avalanche activity. However, in the French Alps, no correlations were found between avalanche activity and the NAO (Jomelli et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…García et al . () and García‐Sellés et al . () found a negative relationship between avalanche activity and the NAO in the Eastern Pyrenees, but could not identify the process of the NAO governing avalanche activity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large‐scale teleconnection patterns and synoptic climatology of major snow‐avalanche winters in the Presidential Range (New Hampshire, USA)

Martin

Germain

2017

Intl Journal of Climatology

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The relationships between the synoptic climatology, large‐scale teleconnections and the regional avalanche activity index (RAAI) inferred from tree‐rings were evaluated for the Presidential Range in the White Mountains (New Hampshire, USA). During the period 1936–2012, 18 years of regional avalanche activity were compared with the winter‐scale prevailing joint temperature/climatic modes (cold/wet (CW), cold/dry (CD), warm/wet (WW) and warm/dry (WW)), the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the 500‐mbar composite anomaly maps and the ratio of snow from different storm tracks. The total winter snowfall and the NAO negatively correlate with the RAAI. There is also a significant difference in avalanche activity between winters with a NAO under or above −3. Winters of regional avalanche activity were present in the four climatic modes, albeit the ratio of avalanche/non‐avalanche years is superior for CW winters compared to the three other modes, as well as for wet winters compared to dry winters. CW, CD and WW winters exhibit a negative NAO anomaly, which is eastbound for the wet years. Cold winters (CW, CD) receive more snow from the Great Lakes, whereas coastal depressions are more important during wet winters (CW, WW). The NAO is an adequate predictor of snowfall, but does not provide information about the storm tracks. On the contrary, the ENSO is poorly correlated with snowfall, but its relationship is significant with the ratio of snow produced by coastal depressions (positive relationship) and Great Lakes storms (negative relationship). These are the first results quantifying the atmospheric circulation – synoptic meteorology – snow avalanche relationships in Northeastern North America.

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“…Kostopoulou and Jones, 2007;Nishiyama et al, 2007;Lorenzo et al, 2008;Jones and Lister, 2009;Schuenemann et al, 2009;Casado et al, 2010;Tveito, 2010;Brisson et al, 2011;Küttel et al, 2011;Raziei et al, 2012 to name just a few recent examples) including extremes (Cassano et al, 2006;Jacobeit et al, 2009;Maraun et al, 2011) and diurnal cycles (Twardosz, 2010). Many other climatic and environmental characteristics have, nevertheless, been investigated as well: wind and wind storms (Cassano et al, 2006;Leckebusch et al, 2008;Donat et al, 2010), droughts (Vicente-Serrano and López-Moreno, 2006;Fleig et al, 2010), floods (Dayan et al, 2012), snowfall and avalanches (Esteban et al, 2005;Bednorz, 2008;García et al, 2009), lightning activity (Pineda et al, 2010), atmospheric pollutants and dust transport (Demuzere et al, 2009Lykoudis et al, 2010;Stefan et al, 2010;Dayan et al, 2012;Gaetani et al, 2016;Beck et al, 2014), forest fires (Kassomenos, 2010;Rasilla et al, 2010), storm surges (Ullmann and Monbaliu, 2010;Rasilla and García-Codrón, 2016), potato yields (Sepp and Saue, 2012) and many others.…”

Section: General Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Synoptic‐climatological evaluation of the classifications of atmospheric circulation patterns over Europe

Huth

Beck

Kučerová

2015

Intl Journal of Climatology

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This study evaluates the classifications of atmospheric circulation patterns collected in the COST733 database (COST733cat) in terms of their ability to stratify daily surface temperature and precipitation in 12 domains covering the whole of Europe. The classifications differ in the classification methods used, in the number of types, the variable(s) classified, the number of days in a sequence that are classified and in whether the classification is based on year-round or seasonal data. Several classification methods that perform fairly well are identified; they include a simple k-means clustering, a k-means clustering preceded by hierarchical cluster analysis, Litynski's method, and a classification based on circulation prototypes. On the other hand, there are a couple of classification methods that do not provide a good stratification of temperature and precipitation: orthogonally and obliquely rotated principal component analysis in a T-mode, Lund's correlation method, Kirchhofer's sums-of-squares method, and Erpicum's method. Some methods tend to perform better on large domains, while others tend to perform better on smaller domains; however, the sensitivity of most classification methods to the domain size appears to be small. Several methods exhibit a geographical dependence of their performance, e.g. the method based on circulation prototypes tends to perform better in the northern domains, while Jenkinson-Collison and Erpicum's methods perform better in the southern domains. Classifications of 4-day sequences are usually better in stratifying surface temperature than ordinary instantaneous classifications; the opposite is true for precipitation. Adding a mid-tropospheric variable (500 hPa heights or 1000/500 hPa thickness) to sea level pressure as a classified variable improves the skill of classifications in stratifying temperature.

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Major avalanches occurrence at regional scale and related atmospheric circulation patterns in the Eastern Pyrenees

Cited by 19 publications

References 11 publications

Effects of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on combined temperature and precipitation winter modes in the Mediterranean mountains: Observed relationships and projections for the 21st century

Effects of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on combined temperature and precipitation winter modes in the Mediterranean mountains: Observed relationships and projections for the 21st century

Large‐scale teleconnection patterns and synoptic climatology of major snow‐avalanche winters in the Presidential Range (New Hampshire, USA)

Synoptic‐climatological evaluation of the classifications of atmospheric circulation patterns over Europe

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