Stratospheric influence on marine cold air outbreaks in the Barents Sea

Marine cold air outbreaks (MCAOs) in the Arctic are associated with a range of severe weather phenomena, such as polar lows, strong surface winds and intense cooling of the ocean surface. While MCAO frequency has been linked to the strength of the stratospheric polar vortex, a connection to the occu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Afargan-Gerstman, Hilla, Polkova, Iuliia, Papritz, Lukas, Ruggieri, Paolo, King, Martin P., Athanasiadis, Panos J., Baehr, Johanna, Domeisen, Daniela I. V.
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Arctic
Barents Sea
Greenland
Norwegian Sea
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2020-11
https://wcd.copernicus.org/preprints/wcd-2020-11/
Description
Summary:Marine cold air outbreaks (MCAOs) in the Arctic are associated with a range of severe weather phenomena, such as polar lows, strong surface winds and intense cooling of the ocean surface. While MCAO frequency has been linked to the strength of the stratospheric polar vortex, a connection to the occurrence of extreme stratospheric events, known as sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs), has dominantly been investigated with respect to cold extremes over land. Here, the influence of SSW events on MCAOs in the Barents Sea is studied using observational and reanalysis datasets. Overall, more than a half of SSW events lead to more frequent MCAOs in the Barents Sea. SSW events with an enhanced MCAO response in the Barents Sea are associated with a ridge over Greenland and a trough over Scandinavia, leading to an anomalous dipole pattern of 500-hPa geopotential height and strong northerly flow over the Norwegian Sea. As SSW events tend to have a long-term influence on surface weather, these results can shed light on the predictability of MCAOs in the Arctic for winters with SSW events.

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