Simulation of Extreme Arctic Cyclones in IPCC AR5 Experiments

• Main Author: Vavrus, Stephen J
• Other Authors: WISCONSIN UNIV-MADISON BOARD OF REGENTS/RESEARCH SPONSORED PROGRAMS
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Meteorology; *ARCTIC REGIONS; *CYCLONES; ALEUTIAN ISLANDS; BAROMETRIC PRESSURE; DISPLAY SYSTEMS; GLOBAL; GREENHOUSE EFFECT; INTENSITY; POLAR REGIONS; REGIONS; SIMULATION; WEATHER; CLIMATE CHANGE; *ARCTIC CYCLONESES; Arctic; Climate change; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA603823; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA603823

Increasing attention is being paid to extreme weather, including recent high-profile events involving very destructive cyclones. In summer 2012 a historically powerful cyclone traversed the Arctic, a region experiencing rapid warming and dramatic loss of ice and snow cover. This project addresses whether such powerful storms are an emerging expression of anthropogenic climate change by investigating simulated extreme Arctic cyclones during the historical period (1850-2005) among global climate models in the CMIP5 archive. These GCMs are able to simulate extreme pressures associated with strong polar storms without a significant dependence on model resolution. The models display realism by generating extreme Arctic storms primarily around sub-polar cyclone regions (Aleutian and Icelandic) and preferentially during winter. Simulated secular trends in Arctic mean sea level pressure (SLP) and extreme cyclones are equivocal; both indicate increasing storminess in some regions, but the magnitude of changes to date are modest compared with future projections.