Recent Trends in the Recurrence of North Atlantic Atmospheric Circulation Patterns

A few types of extreme climate events in the North Atlantic region, such as heatwaves, cold spells, or high cumulated precipitation, are connected to the recurrence of atmospheric circulation patterns. Understanding those extreme events requires assessing long-term trends of the atmospheric circulation. This paper presents a set of diagnostics of the intra- and interannual recurrence of atmospheric patterns. Those diagnostics are devised to detect trends in the stability of the circulation and the return period of atmospheric patterns. We detect significant emerging trends in the winter circulation, pointing towards a potential increased predictability. No such signal seems to emerge in the summer. We find that the winter trends in the dominating atmospheric patterns and their recurrences do not depend of the patterns themselves.

[1]  P ? ? ? ? ? ? ? % ? ? ? ? , 1991 .

[2]  Tim N. Palmer,et al.  Signature of recent climate change in frequencies of natural atmospheric circulation regimes , 1999, Nature.

[3]  S. Vavrus,et al.  Sinuosity of midlatitude atmospheric flow in a warming world , 2016 .

[4]  E. Lorenz.  Atmospheric Predictability as Revealed by Naturally Occurring Analogues , 1969 .

[5]  Georgy Sofronov,et al.  Multiple Break-Points Detection in Array CGH Data via the Cross-Entropy Method , 2015, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

[6]  S. Vavrus,et al.  Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid‐latitudes , 2012 .

[7]  Michael Small,et al.  Recurrence-based time series analysis by means of complex network methods , 2010, Int. J. Bifurc. Chaos.

[8]  D. Faranda,et al.  The switching between zonal and blocked mid-latitude atmospheric circulation: a dynamical system perspective , 2016, Climate Dynamics.

[9]  R. Vautard,et al.  A Statistical Framework for Conditional Extreme Event Attribution , 2017 .

[10]  I. Simmonds,et al.  Caution needed when linking weather extremes to amplified planetary waves , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[11]  P. Yiou,et al.  Weather regime dependence of extreme value statistics for summer temperature and precipitation , 2008 .

[12]  R. Vautard,et al.  Weather Regimes: Recurrence and Quasi Stationarity , 1995 .

[13]  Ian Simmonds,et al.  Exploring links between Arctic amplification and mid‐latitude weather , 2013 .

[14]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[15]  P. Jones,et al.  The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project , 2009 .

[16]  Hans Joachim Schellnhuber,et al.  Quasiresonant amplification of planetary waves and recent Northern Hemisphere weather extremes , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[17]  B. Hoskins,et al.  Fluid dynamics of the midlatitude atmosphere , 2014 .

[18]  Richard G. Jones,et al.  Human influence on climate in the 2014 southern England winter floods and their impacts , 2016 .

[19]  W. Collins,et al.  The NCEP–NCAR 50-Year Reanalysis: Monthly Means CD-ROM and Documentation , 2001 .

[20]  G. Sturaro.  A closer look at the climatological discontinuities present in the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis temperature due to the introduction of satellite data , 2003 .

[21]  R. Vautard,et al.  Inconsistency between atmospheric dynamics and temperatures during the exceptional 2006/2007 fall/winter and recent warming in Europe , 2007 .

[22]  R. Vautard,et al.  Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change , 2016 .

[23]  H. Storch,et al.  Statistical Analysis in Climate Research , 2000 .

[24]  T. Shepherd.  A Common Framework for Approaches to Extreme Event Attribution , 2016, Current Climate Change Reports.

[25]  J. Foster,et al.  Winter 2009–2010: A case study of an extreme Arctic Oscillation event , 2010 .

[26]  Valerio Lucarini,et al.  Extremes and Recurrence in Dynamical Systems , 2016, 1605.07006.

[27]  A. Timmermann,et al.  Using palaeo-climate comparisons to constrain future projections in CMIP5 , 2013 .

[28]  A. Phillips,et al.  Tropical Atlantic Influence on European Heat Waves , 2005 .

[29]  S. Rahmstorf,et al.  Role of quasiresonant planetary wave dynamics in recent boreal spring-to-autumn extreme events , 2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[30]  A. Sterl,et al.  Drivers of the 2013/14 winter floods in the UK , 2015 .

[31]  R. Vautard,et al.  Attribution of Wintertime Anticyclonic Stagnation Contributing to Air Pollution in Western Europe , 2018 .

[32]  Jürgen Kurths,et al.  Recurrence plots for the analysis of complex systems , 2009 .

[33]  R. Vautard,et al.  Origins of the extremely warm European fall of 2006 , 2009 .

[34]  Mathieu Vrac,et al.  Ensemble reconstruction of the atmospheric column from surface pressure using analogues , 2013, Climate Dynamics.

[35]  Davide Faranda,et al.  Dynamical proxies of North Atlantic predictability and extremes , 2017, Scientific Reports.

[36]  D. Ruelle,et al.  Recurrence Plots of Dynamical Systems , 1987 .

[37]  Pascal Yiou,et al.  Winter 2010 in Europe: A cold extreme in a warming climate , 2010 .

[38]  W. Marsden.  I and J , 2012 .

[39]  Simon Parry,et al.  Potential influences on the United Kingdom's floods of winter 2013/14 , 2014 .

[40]  Ian Simmonds,et al.  The Atmospheric Response to Three Decades of Observed Arctic Sea Ice Loss , 2013 .

[41]  Norbert Marwan,et al.  Line structures in recurrence plots , 2005 .

[42]  E. Barnes.  Revisiting the evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in midlatitudes , 2013 .