| 1. |
- Messori, Gabriele, et al.
(författare)
-
Atmospheric jet stream variability reflects vegetation activity in Europe
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. - : Elsevier. - 0168-1923 .- 1873-2240. ; 322
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Jet streams are a key component of the climate system, whose dynamics couple closely to regional climate variability. Yet, the link between jet stream variability and vegetation activity has received little attention. Here, we leverage our understanding of the mid-latitude jet stream dynamics over the Euro-Atlantic sector to probe climate-vegetation interactions across Europe. We link indices related to the meridional location of the jet and the large-scale zonal wind speed with remotely-sensed vegetation greenness anomalies during locally-defined growing seasons. Correlations between greenness anomalies and jet latitude anomalies point to a control of the jet stream's variability on vegetation activity over large parts of Europe. This potential control is mediated by the jet latitude anomalies' correlations with temperature, soil moisture and downward surface solar radiation. The sign and strength of these correlations depend on location and time of the year. Furthermore, jet stream variability modulates conditions at the onset and end of the growing season. The link between jet latitude anomalies and vegetation greenness is not only specific to the climate zone, but also to the landclass and subperiod within the growing season. It is thus important to use a locally-defined growing season for interpreting the atmospheric controls on regional vegetation phenology. Results consistent with the correlation analysis emerge when focussing on local high or low greenness months only or on zonal wind speed anomalies, confirming the relevance of jet variability for vegetation activity.
|
|
| 2. |
- Wu, Minchao, et al.
(författare)
-
Drought Legacy in Sub-Seasonal Vegetation State and Sensitivity to Climate Over the Northern Hemisphere
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Geophysical Research Letters. - 0094-8276 .- 1944-8007. ; 49:15
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Droughts affect ecosystems at multiple time scales, but their sub-seasonal legacy effects on vegetation activity remain unclear. Combining the satellite-based enhanced vegetation index MODIS EVI with a novel location-specific definition of the growing season, we quantify drought impacts on sub-seasonal vegetation activity and the subsequent recovery in the Northern Hemisphere. Drought legacy effects are quantified as changes in post-drought greenness and sensitivity to climate. We find that greenness losses under severe drought are partially compensated by a ∼+5% greening within 2–6 growing-season months following the droughts, both in woody and herbaceous vegetation but at different timings. In addition, post-drought sensitivity of herbaceous vegetation to hydrological conditions increases noticeably at high latitudes compared with the local normal conditions, regardless of the choice of drought time scales. In general, the legacy effects on sensitivity are larger in herbaceous vegetation than in woody vegetation.
|
|
| 3. |
- Wu, Minchao, et al.
(författare)
-
Early growing season anomalies in vegetation activity determine the large‐scale climate‐vegetation coupling in Europe
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. - : American Geophysical Union (AGU). - 2169-8961 .- 2169-8953. ; 126:5
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The climate-vegetation coupling exerts a strong control on terrestrial carbon budgets and will affect the future evolution of global climate under continued anthropogenic forcing. Nonetheless, the effects of climatic conditions on such coupling at specific times in the growing season remain poorly understood. We quantify the climate-vegetation coupling in Europe over 1982–2014 at multiple spatial and temporal scales, by decomposing sub-seasonal anomalies of vegetation greenness using a grid-wise definition of the growing season. We base our analysis on long-term vegetation indices (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and two-band Enhanced Vegetation Index), growing conditions (including 2m temperature, downwards surface solar radiation, and root-zone soil moisture), and multiple teleconnection indices that reflect the large-scale climatic conditions over Europe. We find that the large-scale climate-vegetation coupling during the first two months of the growing season largely determines the full-year coupling. The North Atlantic Oscillation and Scandinavian Pattern phases one-to-two months before the start of the growing season are the dominant and contrasting drivers of the early growing season climate-vegetation coupling over large parts of boreal and temperate Europe. The East Atlantic Pattern several months in advance of the growing season exerts a strong control on the temperate belt and the Mediterranean region. The strong role of early growing season anomalies in vegetative activity within the growing season emphasizes the importance of a grid-wise definition of the growing season when studying the large-scale climate-vegetation coupling in Europe.
|
|
| 4. |
- De Luca, Paolo, et al.
(författare)
-
Dynamical systems theory sheds new light on compound climate extremes in Europe and Eastern North America
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. - : Wiley. - 0035-9009 .- 1477-870X. ; 146:729, s. 1636-1650
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We propose a novel approach to the study of compound extremes, grounded in dynamical systems theory. Specifically, we present the co‐recurrence ratio (α), which elucidates the dependence structure between variables by quantifying their joint recurrences. This approach is applied to daily climate extremes, derived from the ERA‐Interim reanalysis over the 1979–2018 period. The analysis focuses on concurrent (i.e., same‐day) wet (total precipitation) and windy (10 m wind gusts) extremes in Europe and concurrent cold (2 m temperature) extremes in Eastern North America and wet extremes in Europe. Results for wet and windy extremes in Europe, which we use as a test‐bed for our methodology, show that α peaks during boreal winter. High α values correspond to wet and windy extremes in northwestern Europe, and to large‐scale conditions resembling the positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). This confirms earlier findings which link the positive NAO to a heightened frequency of extratropical cyclones impacting northwestern Europe. For the Eastern North America–Europe case, α extremes once again reflect concurrent climate extremes – in this case cold extremes over North America and wet extremes over Europe. Our analysis provides detailed spatial information on regional hotspots for these compound extreme occurrences, and encapsulates information on their spatial footprint which is typically not included in a conventional co‐occurrence analysis. We conclude that α successfully characterises compound extremes by reflecting the evolution of the associated meteorological maps. This approach is entirely general, and may be applied to different types of compound extremes and geographical regions.
|
|
| 5. |
- Gálfi, Vera Melinda, et al.
(författare)
-
Persistent anomalies of the North Atlantic jet stream and associated surface extremes over Europe
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : Institute of Physics (IOP). - 1748-9326. ; 18:2
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Unusual, persistent configurations of the North Atlantic jet stream affect the weather and climate over Europe. We focus on winter and on intraseasonal and seasonal time scales, and study persistent jet anomalies through the lens of large deviation theory using Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) simulations of the MPI-ESM-LR model and ERA5 reanalysis data. The configurations of interest are defined as long-lasting anomalies of a few months in jet latitude, speed or zonality. Our results show that persistent temperature and precipitation extremes over large European regions are anomalously frequent during the unusual, persistent jet configurations we identify. Furthermore, the relative increase in frequency of surface extremes is larger for more intense surface extremes and/or more extreme jet anomalies. This is relevant in the context of the predictability of these extremes. The highest extreme event frequencies at the surface are observed in case of precipitation over the Mediterranean and Western Europe during anomalously zonal and/or fast jet events, pointing to these jet anomalies matching rather homogeneous large scale atmospheric configurations with a clear surface footprint. Additionally, our results emphasise the usefulness of large deviation rate functions to estimate the frequency of occurrence of persistent jet anomalies. They therefore provide a tool to statistically describe long-lasting anomalies, much like extreme value theory may be used to investigate shorter-lived extreme events.
|
|
| 6. |
- Hepworth, Ehlke, et al.
(författare)
-
Association Between Extreme Atmospheric Anomalies Over Antarctic Sea Ice, Southern Ocean Polar Cyclones and Atmospheric Rivers
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres. - : American Geophysical Union (AGU). - 2169-897X .- 2169-8996. ; 127:7
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study analyses the association of Southern Ocean extratropical cyclones and atmospheric rivers (ARs) with extreme temperature and/or moisture atmospheric anomalies over Antarctic sea ice. The hypothesis we test is whether the circulations associated with cyclones and ARs may routinely lead to the presence of unusually warm, moist air masses over ice-covered regions. The analysis is conducted over the extended Austral winter seasons (May-September) between May 1979 and September 2012, based on the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim reanalysis data. Approximately 27% of intense Southern Ocean cyclones and 20% of ARs occur in the vicinity of extreme temperature anomalies, while 12% of intense cyclones and 46% of ARs occur in the vicinity of extreme moisture anomalies. We summarize our results as follows: (a) extreme atmospheric anomalies over sea ice often occur in the absence of cyclones or ARs; (b) intense cyclones have a stronger association with extreme temperature anomalies than ARs; (c) approximately half of the ARs are in the vicinity of extreme moisture anomalies, while the latter's link with cyclones is weak; and (d) if an AR is in the vicinity of an extreme temperature anomaly, there will likely be a concurrent extreme moisture anomaly. This points to a strong association between ARs and moisture extremes, and a nuanced link between Southern Ocean polar cyclones and atmospheric anomalies over Antarctic sea ice.
|
|
| 7. |
- Hochman, Assaf, et al.
(författare)
-
A new dynamical systems perspective on atmospheric predictability : Eastern Mediterranean weather regimes as a case study
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Science Advances. - : AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE. - 2375-2548. ; 5:6
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The atmosphere is a chaotic system displaying recurrent large-scale configurations. Recent developments in dynamical systems theory allow us to describe these configurations in terms of the local dimension-a proxy for the active number of degrees of freedom-and persistence in phase space, which can be interpreted as persistence in time. These properties provide information on the intrinsic predictability of an atmospheric state. Here, this technique is applied to atmospheric configurations in the eastern Mediterranean, grouped into synoptic classifications (SCs). It is shown that local dimension and persistence, derived from reanalysis and CMIP5 models' daily sea-level pressure fields, can serve as an extremely informative qualitative method for evaluating the predictability of the different SCs. These metrics, combined with the SC transitional probability approach, may be a valuable complement to operational weather forecasts and effective tools for climate model evaluation. This new perspective can be extended to other geographical regions.
|
|
| 8. |
- Hochman, Assaf, et al.
(författare)
-
A new view of heat wave dynamics and predictability over the eastern Mediterranean
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Earth System Dynamics. - : Copernicus Publications. - 2190-4979 .- 2190-4987. ; 12:1, s. 133-149
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Skillful forecasts of extreme weather events have a major socioeconomic relevance. Here, we compare two complementary approaches to diagnose the predictability of extreme weather: recent developments in dynamical systems theory and numerical ensemble weather forecasts. The former allows us to define atmospheric configurations in terms of their persistence and local dimension, which provides information on how the atmosphere evolves to and from a given state of interest. These metrics may be used as proxies for the intrinsic predictability of the atmosphere, which only depends on the atmosphere's properties. Ensemble weather forecasts provide information on the practical predictability of the atmosphere, which partly depends on the performance of the numerical model used. We focus on heat waves affecting the eastern Mediterranean. These are identified using the climatic stress index (CSI), which was explicitly developed for the summer weather conditions in this region and differentiates between heat waves (upper decile) and cool days (lower decile). Significant differences are found between the two groups from both the dynamical systems and the numerical weather prediction perspectives. Specifically, heat waves show relatively stable flow characteristics (high intrinsic predictability) but comparatively low practical predictability (large model spread and error). For 500 hPa geopotential height fields, the intrinsic predictability of heat waves is lowest at the event's onset and decay. We relate these results to the physical processes governing eastern Mediterranean summer heat waves: adiabatic descent of the air parcels over the region and the geographical origin of the air parcels over land prior to the onset of a heat wave. A detailed analysis of the mid-August 2010 record-breaking heat wave provides further insights into the range of different regional atmospheric configurations conducive to heat waves. We conclude that the dynamical systems approach can be a useful complement to conventional numerical forecasts for understanding the dynamics and predictability of eastern Mediterranean heat waves.
|
|
| 9. |
- Scher, Sebastian, et al.
(författare)
-
How Global Warming Changes the Difficulty of Synoptic Weather Forecasting
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Geophysical Research Letters. - 0094-8276 .- 1944-8007. ; 46:5, s. 2931-2939
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Global warming projections point to a wide range of impacts on the climate system, including changes in storm track activity and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. Little is however known on whether and how global warming may affect the atmosphere's predictability and thus our ability to produce accurate weather forecasts. Here, we combine a state-of-the-art climate and a state-of-the-art ensemble weather prediction model to show that, in a business-as-usual 21st century setting, global warming could significantly change the predictability of the atmosphere, defined here via the expected error of weather predictions. Predictability of synoptic weather situations could significantly increase, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. This can be explained by a decrease in the meridional temperature gradient. Contrarily, summertime predictability of weekly rainfall sums might significantly decrease in most regions.Plain Language Summary Due to the chaotic nature of the atmosphere, it is impossible to make weather forecasts that are completely accurate. Therefore, all weather forecasts are inherently uncertain to a certain degree. However, this uncertainty-and thus the "difficulty" of making good forecastsis not the same for all forecasts. This opens up the highly important question whether global warming will affect the difficulty of weather forecasts. Due to the enormous socioeconomic importance of accurate weather forecasts, it is essential to know whether climate change adaption policies also need to take into account potential changes in the difficulty and accuracy of weather forecasts. We show that in a warmer world, it will be easier to predict fields such as temperature and pressure. Contrarily, it will be harder to make accurate precipitation forecasts, which might strongly affect both disaster prevention and rainfall-dependent industries such as the energy sector, all of which heavily rely on accurate precipitation forecasts. Additionally, we show that the uncertainty of predictions of pressure fields is to a large extent controlled by fluctuations in the temperature difference between the North Pole and the equator. This is a new and important insight into the fundamentals of weather forecast uncertainty.
|
|
| 10. |
- Scher, Sebastian, et al.
(författare)
-
Weather and climate forecasting with neural networks : using general circulation models (GCMs) with different complexity as a study ground
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Geoscientific Model Development. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1991-959X .- 1991-9603. ; 12:7, s. 2797-2809
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recently, there has been growing interest in the possibility of using neural networks for both weather forecasting and the generation of climate datasets. We use a bottom-up approach for assessing whether it should, in principle, be possible to do this. We use the relatively simple general circulation models (GCMs) PUMA and PLASIM as a simplified reality on which we train deep neural networks, which we then use for predicting the model weather at lead times of a few days. We specifically assess how the complexity of the climate model affects the neural network's forecast skill and how dependent the skill is on the length of the provided training period. Additionally, we show that using the neural networks to reproduce the climate of general circulation models including a seasonal cycle remains challenging - in contrast to earlier promising results on a model without seasonal cycle.
|
|
