Relationship between two types of heat waves in northern East Asia and temperature anomalies in Eastern Europe

• Published in: Environmental Research Letters
• Main Authors: Xiaoye Yang, Gang Zeng, Shiyue Zhang, Zhixin Hao, Vedaste Iyakaremye
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 2021
• Subjects: heat wave; clustering; Northern East Asia; Eastern Europe; linear baroclinic model; Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering; TD1-1066; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Science; Q; Physics; QC1-999; Barents Sea; Greenland
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abdc8a; https://doaj.org/article/169ba0372c0c49ea88ce10b9bf749cce

In this study, the hierarchical clustering algorithm was used to cluster the summer heat waves (HWs) in northern East Asia (NEA) into wave-train HW and blocking HW. In the past 38 years, the wave-train HWs have increased significantly, while the blocking HWs have not shown a visible trend. The wave-train index and the blocking index are proposed to objectively identify the HW type after capturing the circulation characteristics of two kinds of HWs. When a wave-train HW occurs in NEA, simultaneous HW will occur in Eastern Europe. However, when a blocking HW occurs in NEA, a negative temperature anomaly will take place in Eastern Europe. The results of numerical simulations using the linear baroclinic model indicate that the wave-train HWs and the blocking HWs are related to the heating anomaly over southern Greenland and the cooling anomaly over the Barents Sea, respectively.