Atmosphere similarity patterns in boreal summer show an increase of persistent weather conditions connected to hydro-climatic risks.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Hoffmann P
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8613183 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The recent decade has seen an exceptional number of high-impact summer extremes in the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes. Many of these events were associated with anomalous jet stream circulation patterns characterized by persistent high-amplitude quasi-stationary Rossby waves. Two mechanisms have recently been proposed that could provoke such patterns: (i) a weakening of the zonal mean jets and (ii) an amplification of quasi-stationary waves by resonance between free and forced waves in midlatitude waveguides. Based upon spectral analysis of the midtroposphere wind field, we show that the persistent jet stream patterns were, in the first place, due to an amplification of quasi-stationary waves with zonal wave numbers 6-8. However, we also detect a weakening of the zonal mean jet during these events; thus both mechanisms appear to be important. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the anomalous circulation regimes lead to persistent surface weather conditions and therefore to midlatitude synchronization of extreme heat and rainfall events on monthly timescales. The recent cluster of resonance events has resulted in a statistically significant increase in the frequency of high-amplitude quasi-stationary waves of wave numbers 7 and 8 in July and August. We show that this is a robust finding that holds for different pressure levels and reanalysis products. We argue that recent rapid warming in the Arctic and associated changes in the zonal mean zonal wind have created favorable conditions for double jet formation in the extratropics, which promotes the development of resonant flow regimes.
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Project description:Forecasts of summer weather patterns months in advance would be of great value for a wide range of applications. However, seasonal dynamical model forecasts for European summers have very little skill, particularly for rainfall. It has not been clear whether this low skill reflects inherent unpredictability of summer weather or, alternatively, is a consequence of weaknesses in current forecast systems. Here we analyze atmosphere and ocean observations and identify evidence that a specific pattern of summertime atmospheric circulation--the summer East Atlantic (SEA) pattern--is predictable from the previous spring. An index of North Atlantic sea-surface temperatures in March-April can predict the SEA pattern in July-August with a cross-validated correlation skill above 0.6. Our analyses show that the sea-surface temperatures influence atmospheric circulation and the position of the jet stream over the North Atlantic. The SEA pattern has a particularly strong influence on rainfall in the British Isles, which we find can also be predicted months ahead with a significant skill of 0.56. Our results have immediate application to empirical forecasts of summer rainfall for the United Kingdom, Ireland, and northern France and also suggest that current dynamical model forecast systems have large potential for improvement.
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Project description:Assessments of ecosystem service and function losses of wetlandscapes (i.e., wetlands and their hydrological catchments) suffer from knowledge gaps regarding impacts of ongoing hydro-climatic change. This study investigates hydro-climatic changes during 1976-2015 in 25 wetlandscapes distributed across the world's tropical, arid, temperate and cold climate zones. Results show that the wetlandscapes were subject to precipitation (P) and temperature (T) changes consistent with mean changes over the world's land area. However, arid and cold wetlandscapes experienced higher T increases than their respective climate zone. Also, average P decreased in arid and cold wetlandscapes, contrarily to P of arid and cold climate zones, suggesting that these wetlandscapes are located in regions of elevated climate pressures. For most wetlandscapes with available runoff (R) data, the decreases were larger in R than in P, which was attributed to aggravation of climate change impacts by enhanced evapotranspiration losses, e.g. caused by land-use changes.
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Project description:BackgroundAlthough increasingly sophisticated environmental measures are being applied to species distributions models, the focus remains on using climatic data to provide estimates of habitat suitability. Climatic tolerance estimates based on expert knowledge are available for a wide range of plants via the USDA PLANTS database. We aim to test how climatic tolerance inferred from plant distribution records relates to tolerance estimated by experts. Further, we use this information to identify circumstances when species distributions are more likely to approximate climatic tolerance.MethodsWe compiled expert knowledge estimates of minimum and maximum precipitation and minimum temperature tolerance for over 1800 conservation plant species from the 'plant characteristics' information in the USDA PLANTS database. We derived climatic tolerance from distribution data downloaded from the Global Biodiversity and Information Facility (GBIF) and corresponding climate from WorldClim. We compared expert-derived climatic tolerance to empirical estimates to find the difference between their inferred climate niches (?CN), and tested whether ?CN was influenced by growth form or range size.ResultsClimate niches calculated from distribution data were significantly broader than expert-based tolerance estimates (Mann-Whitney p values << 0.001). The average plant could tolerate 24 mm lower minimum precipitation, 14 mm higher maximum precipitation, and 7° C lower minimum temperatures based on distribution data relative to expert-based tolerance estimates. Species with larger ranges had greater ?CN for minimum precipitation and minimum temperature. For maximum precipitation and minimum temperature, forbs and grasses tended to have larger ?CN while grasses and trees had larger ?CN for minimum precipitation.ConclusionOur results show that distribution data are consistently broader than USDA PLANTS experts' knowledge and likely provide more robust estimates of climatic tolerance, especially for widespread forbs and grasses. These findings suggest that widely available expert-based climatic tolerance estimates underrepresent species' fundamental niche and likely fail to capture the realized niche.
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