Quantifying the link between heavy precipitation and Northern Hemisphere blocking—A Lagrangian analysis
Abstract Atmospheric blocks strongly influence surface weather, including extremes such as heat waves and cold spells. Recently, diabatic heating and associated upper‐tropospheric potential vorticity (PV) modification have been identified as important modulators of atmospheric blocking dynamics. Als...
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crwiley:10.1002/asl.999 2024-06-02T08:11:31+00:00 Quantifying the link between heavy precipitation and Northern Hemisphere blocking—A Lagrangian analysis Lenggenhager, Sina Martius, Olivia Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asl.999 https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1002%2Fasl.999 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/asl.999 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1002/asl.999 https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/asl.999 en eng Wiley http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Atmospheric Science Letters volume 21, issue 10 ISSN 1530-261X 1530-261X journal-article 2020 crwiley https://doi.org/10.1002/asl.999 2024-05-03T11:55:06Z Abstract Atmospheric blocks strongly influence surface weather, including extremes such as heat waves and cold spells. Recently, diabatic heating and associated upper‐tropospheric potential vorticity (PV) modification have been identified as important modulators of atmospheric blocking dynamics. Also, robust links between atmospheric blocks and proximate heavy precipitation events have been established. This leads to the question of the extent to which diabatic heating associated with heavy precipitation events influences Northern Hemisphere blocking. This study uses 5 years of 3‐day back trajectories started from objectively identified blocks in the ERA‐Interim dataset to investigate this relationship. A substantial fraction of air parcels in blocks pass through heavy precipitation areas. The exact fraction depends on the choice of heavy precipitation threshold. Roughly 19% of all the trajectories in a block pass a heavy precipitation area (>95th percentile) area while being saturated. Of the air parcels in a block that are heated at least 5 K, 60% pass a heavy precipitation area while saturated. This fraction varies with the season and geographical area. The overall fraction is lowest in summer and highest in winter, higher over oceans than over land, and higher over the Pacific than over the Atlantic. In summer, heating is relevant over the continents and heating over North America influences blocks over the eastern Atlantic. For summer blocks in the North Atlantic and over Scandinavia, heating happens partly over the European continent. Article in Journal/Newspaper North Atlantic Wiley Online Library Pacific Atmospheric Science Letters 21 10 |
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Wiley Online Library |
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English |
description |
Abstract Atmospheric blocks strongly influence surface weather, including extremes such as heat waves and cold spells. Recently, diabatic heating and associated upper‐tropospheric potential vorticity (PV) modification have been identified as important modulators of atmospheric blocking dynamics. Also, robust links between atmospheric blocks and proximate heavy precipitation events have been established. This leads to the question of the extent to which diabatic heating associated with heavy precipitation events influences Northern Hemisphere blocking. This study uses 5 years of 3‐day back trajectories started from objectively identified blocks in the ERA‐Interim dataset to investigate this relationship. A substantial fraction of air parcels in blocks pass through heavy precipitation areas. The exact fraction depends on the choice of heavy precipitation threshold. Roughly 19% of all the trajectories in a block pass a heavy precipitation area (>95th percentile) area while being saturated. Of the air parcels in a block that are heated at least 5 K, 60% pass a heavy precipitation area while saturated. This fraction varies with the season and geographical area. The overall fraction is lowest in summer and highest in winter, higher over oceans than over land, and higher over the Pacific than over the Atlantic. In summer, heating is relevant over the continents and heating over North America influences blocks over the eastern Atlantic. For summer blocks in the North Atlantic and over Scandinavia, heating happens partly over the European continent. |
author2 |
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Lenggenhager, Sina Martius, Olivia |
spellingShingle |
Lenggenhager, Sina Martius, Olivia Quantifying the link between heavy precipitation and Northern Hemisphere blocking—A Lagrangian analysis |
author_facet |
Lenggenhager, Sina Martius, Olivia |
author_sort |
Lenggenhager, Sina |
title |
Quantifying the link between heavy precipitation and Northern Hemisphere blocking—A Lagrangian analysis |
title_short |
Quantifying the link between heavy precipitation and Northern Hemisphere blocking—A Lagrangian analysis |
title_full |
Quantifying the link between heavy precipitation and Northern Hemisphere blocking—A Lagrangian analysis |
title_fullStr |
Quantifying the link between heavy precipitation and Northern Hemisphere blocking—A Lagrangian analysis |
title_full_unstemmed |
Quantifying the link between heavy precipitation and Northern Hemisphere blocking—A Lagrangian analysis |
title_sort |
quantifying the link between heavy precipitation and northern hemisphere blocking—a lagrangian analysis |
publisher |
Wiley |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asl.999 https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1002%2Fasl.999 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/asl.999 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1002/asl.999 https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/asl.999 |
geographic |
Pacific |
geographic_facet |
Pacific |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_source |
Atmospheric Science Letters volume 21, issue 10 ISSN 1530-261X 1530-261X |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1002/asl.999 |
container_title |
Atmospheric Science Letters |
container_volume |
21 |
container_issue |
10 |
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1800757695307841536 |