The Polar Vortex and Extreme Weather: The Beast from the East in Winter 2018

Rj, Hall; Hanna, Edward; Karpechko, Alexey; Vihma, Timo; Wang, Muyin; Zhang, Xiangdong

doi:10.3390/atmos11060664

Cited by 26 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Focusing on SSW impacts on European weather, cold air outbreaks can occur over Eurasia and northwestern (NW) Europe (Kolstad et al 2010; Lehtonen & Karpechko, 2016; Mitchell et al., 2013; Tomassini et al., 2012). For example, the “Beast from the East” cold air outbreak over NW Europe at the start of March 2018 was associated with a SSW onset in mid‐February (e.g., Karpechko et al., 2018; Overland et al., 2020). Kolstad et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking the Stratosphere‐to‐Surface Impact of Sudden Stratospheric Warmings

Mitchell

Seviour

2021

JGR Atmospheres

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In winter, a polar vortex develops in the stratosphere (the stratospheric polar vortex; SPV), with strong westerly zonal winds blowing around a region of low temperatures roughly located over the pole. On occasion, most often in the Northern Hemisphere, the SPV can break down, in what is known as a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW), one of the most dramatic of atmospheric phenomena (M. P. Baldwin et al., 2021). First described by Scherhag (1952) they involve the rapid warming of the SPV with temperatures increasing by up to 30-40 K over 1-2 days (Butler et al., 2017). The zonal mean westerly winds at 10 hPa and 60°N reverse, and this is typically used as the definition of an SSW (for more details see Butler et al., 2017). SSWs occur on average around 6 times a decade, although the observational record is short and there is considerable interdecadal variability in occurrence (Charlton & Polvani, 2007; hereafter CP07). While some uncertainty remains as to the driving mechanisms of SSWs, most are believed to be related to internal resonances of the SPV (e.g., N. J. Matthewman & Esler, 2011) and to the vertical propagation of planetary waves from the troposphere, often associated with tropospheric blocking (Martius et al., 2009), which then break and interact with the mean flow (Matsuno, 1971; Polvani & Waugh, 2004). SSWs are important as they can impact upon mid-latitude weather, typically over a period up to 40 days after an SSW (M. P. Baldwin & Dunkerton, 2001). The weakening of the vortex can favor an equatorward shift of the tropospheric jet and storm tracks over the Atlantic (Kidston et al., 2015). Focusing on SSW impacts on European weather, cold air outbreaks can occur over Eurasia and northwestern (NW) Europe (Kolstad

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking the Stratosphere‐to‐Surface Impact of Sudden Stratospheric Warmings

Mitchell

Seviour

2021

JGR Atmospheres

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“…This anomalous warming event occurred coincidently after the sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event observed in mid-February 2018 (Moore et al, 2018;Rao et al 2018), which developed into a vortex split (Lü et al, 2020). Subsequently, the winter weather was severe with intense cold air across Europe in March 2018 (Overland et al, 2020). Although the exact cause of SSW variability in still under debate, SSWs are generally known to cause anomalous warming over Greenland and impact surface weather patterns down to mid-latitudes (Butler et al, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causes and Evolution of Winter Polynyas over North of Greenland

Lee

Maslowski

Cassano

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. During the 42-year period (1979–2020) of satellite measurements, only three winter polynyas have ever been observed north of Greenland and they all occurred in the last decade, i.e. February of 2011, 2017 and 2018. The 2018 polynya was unparalleled by its magnitude and duration compared to the two previous events. Combined with the limited weather station and remotely-sensed sea ice data, a fully-coupled Regional Arctic System Model (RASM) hindcast simulation was utilized to examine the causality and evolution of these recent extreme events. We found that neither the accompanying anomalous warm surface air intrusion nor the ocean below had an impact on the development of these winter open water episodes in the study region (i.e., no significant ice melting). Instead, the extreme atmospheric wind forcing resulted in greater sea ice deformation and transport offshore, accounting for the majority of sea ice loss. Our analysis suggests that strong southerly winds (i.e., northward wind with speeds of greater than 10 m/s) blowing persistently for at least 2 days or more, were required over the study region to mechanically redistribute some of the thickest sea ice out of the region and thus to create open water areas (a latent heat polynya). In order to assess the role of internal variability versus external forcing of such events, we additionally simulated and examined results from two RASM ensembles forced with output from the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Decadal Prediction Large Ensemble (DPLE) simulations. Out of 100 winters in each of the two ensembles, initialized 30 years apart, one in December 1985 and another in December 2015, respectively, 17 and 14 winter polynyas were produced over north of Greenland. The frequency of polynya occurrence and no apparent sensitivity to the initial sea ice thickness in the study area point to internal variability of atmospheric forcing as a dominant cause of winter polynyas north of Greenland. We assert that dynamical downscaling using a high-resolution regional climate model offers a robust tool for process-level examination in space and time, synthesis with limited observations and probabilistic forecast of Arctic events, such as the ones being investigated here and elsewhere.

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“…It was nevertheless preceded by a preliminary planetary wave pulse in mid-January, primarily from wave-1 (Lü et al, 2020;Xie et al, 2020). While the pronounced impacts of the SSW in the troposphere in the form of cold air outbreaks over Europe, Asia and North America in February and March have been studied (Karpechko et al, 2018;Lü et al, 2020;Overland et al, 2020;Knight et al, 2020), there have been few studies of the stratosphere-mesosphere coupling during this event. A notable exception is Wang et al (2019) who observed the mesospheric zonal wind reversal and carbon monoxide (CO) abundance in the layer 70-85 km using ground-based microwave remote sensing at a mid-latitude site.…”

Section: Winter 2017-2018mentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the Major Ssws of February 2018 and January 2019 on the Middle Atmospheric Nitric Oxide Abundance

Pérot

Orsolini²

2021

SSRN Journal

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The Arctic middle atmosphere was affected by major sudden stratospheric warmings (SSW) in February 2018 and January 2019, respectively. In this article, we report for the first time the impact of these two events on the middle atmospheric nitric oxide (NO) abundance. The study is based on measurements obtained during two dedicated observation campaigns, using the Sub-Millimetre Radiometer (SMR) aboard the Odin satellite, measuring NO globally since 2003. The SSW of February 2018 was similar to other, more dynamically quiet, Arctic winters in term of NO downward transport from the upper mesosphere-lower thermosphere to lower altitudes (referred to as energetic particle precipitation indirect effect EPP-IE). On the contrary, the event of January 2019 led to one of the strongest EPP-IE cases observed within the Odin operational period. Important positive NO anomalies were indeed observed in the lower mesosphere-upper stratosphere during the three months following the SSW onset, corresponding to NO volume mixing ratios more than 50 times higher than the climatological values. These different consequences on the middle atmospheric composition are explained by very different dynamical characteristics of these two SSW events.

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The Polar Vortex and Extreme Weather: The Beast from the East in Winter 2018

Cited by 26 publications

References 35 publications

Tracking the Stratosphere‐to‐Surface Impact of Sudden Stratospheric Warmings

Tracking the Stratosphere‐to‐Surface Impact of Sudden Stratospheric Warmings

Causes and Evolution of Winter Polynyas over North of Greenland

Impact of the Major Ssws of February 2018 and January 2019 on the Middle Atmospheric Nitric Oxide Abundance

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