How will climate change affect explosive cyclones in the extratropics of the Northern Hemisphere?

Abstract

Explosive cyclones are rapidly intensifying low pressure systems generating severe wind speeds and heavy precipitation primarily in coastal and marine environments. This study presents the first analysis on how explosive cyclones respond to climate change in the extratropics of the Northern Hemisphere. An objective-feature tracking algorithm is used to identify and track cyclones from 23 CMIP5 climate models for the recent past (1981–1999) and future (2081–2099). Explosive cyclones are projected to shift northwards by about $2.2^\circ$ latitude on average in the northern Pacific, with fewer and weaker events south of $45^\circ \hbox {N}$, and more frequent and stronger events north of this latitude. This shift is correlated with a poleward shift of the jet stream in the inter-model spread ($R=0.56$). In the Atlantic, the total number of explosive cyclones is projected to decrease by about 17 % when averaging across models, with the largest changes occurring along North America’s East Coast. This reduction is correlated with a decline in the lower-tropospheric Eady growth rate ($R=0.51$), and is stronger for models with smaller frequency biases ($R=-0.65$). The same region is also projected to experience a small intensification of explosive cyclones, with larger vorticity values for models that predict stronger increases in the speed of the jet stream ($R=0.58$). This strengthening of the jet stream is correlated with an enhanced sea surface temperature gradient in the North Atlantic ($R=-0.63$). The inverse relationship between model bias and projection, and the role of model resolution are discussed.