Global meteorological influences on the record UK rainfall of winter 2013–14

The UK experienced record average rainfall in winter 2013–14, leading to widespread and prolonged flooding. The immediate cause of this exceptional rainfall was a very strong and persistent cyclonic atmospheric circulation over the North East Atlantic Ocean. This was related to a very strong North A...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental Research Letters
Main Authors: Jeff R Knight, Anna Maidens, Peter A G Watson, Martin Andrews, Stephen Belcher, Gilbert Brunet, David Fereday, Chris K Folland, Adam A Scaife, Julia Slingo
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2017
Subjects:
winter 2013–14
floods
UK rainfall
atmospheric circulation
Rossby waves
climate change
Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
TD1-1066
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Science
Q
Physics
QC1-999
North Atlantic
North East Atlantic
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa693c
https://doaj.org/article/dcc23a7c4ba3429097875304e44fbab4
Description
Summary:The UK experienced record average rainfall in winter 2013–14, leading to widespread and prolonged flooding. The immediate cause of this exceptional rainfall was a very strong and persistent cyclonic atmospheric circulation over the North East Atlantic Ocean. This was related to a very strong North Atlantic jet stream which resulted in numerous damaging wind storms. These exceptional meteorological conditions have led to renewed questions about whether anthropogenic climate change is noticeably influencing extreme weather. The regional weather pattern responsible for the extreme UK winter coincided with highly anomalous conditions across the globe. We assess the contributions from various possible remote forcing regions using sets of ocean–atmosphere model relaxation experiments, where winds and temperatures are constrained to be similar to those observed in winter 2013–14 within specified atmospheric domains. We find that influences from the tropics were likely to have played a significant role in the development of the unusual extra-tropical circulation, including a role for the tropical Atlantic sector. Additionally, a stronger and more stable stratospheric polar vortex, likely associated with a strong westerly phase of the stratospheric Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO), appears to have contributed to the extreme conditions. While intrinsic climatic variability clearly has the largest effect on the generation of extremes, results from an analysis which segregates circulation-related and residual rainfall variability suggest that emerging climate change signals made a secondary contribution to extreme rainfall in winter 2013–14.

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