Understanding climate
for the benefit of society

Revisiting Atlantic-European weather regimes

Christian Grams, senior scientist and lecturer from Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich will give a talk on March 29.

Body
Christian Grams

Abstract:

The large-scale midlatitude flow is dominated by Rossby wave activity along the upper-level midlatitude wave guide and jet stream. In the Atlantic-European region this activity occurs in preferred quasi-stationary persistent states, so-called weather regimes, which here explain most of the atmospheric variability on sub-seasonal time scales.

In this presentation Atlantic-European weather regimes are revisited in order to elucidate their linkage to the eddy-driven jet, atmospheric blocking, and the physical and dynamical processes governing their life cycles. For the latter, the focus is on "diabatic outflow" driven by cloud-condensational processes in synoptic-scale weather systems.

Furthermore, the role of weather regimes in extreme weather events is discussed with focus on their influence on atmospheric river occurrence in Europe and recent examples of severe flooding and heat waves. Finally, challenges in predictability are exemplarily demonstrated for a recent forecast bust.

Arranged date for the seminar talk: Mar 29, 2017