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Climatology of tracked persistent maxima of 500-hPa geopotential height

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Abstract

Persistent open ridges and blocking highs (maxima) of 500-hPa geopotential height (Z500; PMZ) adjacent in space and time are identified and tracked as one event with a Lagrangian objective approach to derive their climatological statistics with some dynamical reasoning. A PMZ starts with a core that contains a local eddy maximum of Z500 and its neighboring grid points whose eddy values decrease radially to about 20 geopotential meters (GPMs) smaller than the maximum. It connects two consecutive cores that share at least one grid point and are within 10° of longitude of each other using an intensity-weighted location. The PMZ ends at the core without a successor. On each day, the PMZ impacts an area of grid points contiguous to the core and with eddy values decreasing radially to 100 GPMs. The PMZs identified and tracked consist of persistent ridges, omega blockings and blocked anticyclones either connected or as individual events. For example, the PMZ during 2–13 August 2003 corresponds to persistent open ridges that caused the extreme heatwave in Western Europe. Climatological statistics based on the PMZs longer than 3 days generally agree with those of blockings. In the Northern Hemisphere, more PMZs occur in DJF season than in JJA and their duration both exhibit a log-linear distribution. Because more omega-shape blocking highs and open ridges are counted, the PMZs occur more frequently over Northeast Pacific than over Atlantic-Europe during cool seasons. Similar results are obtained using the 200-hPa geopotential height (in place of Z500), indicating the quasi-barotropic nature of the PMZ.

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Notes

  1. A forward Fourier transform produces the harmonics with periodicities at 365, 182, 121, and 91 days. A backward transform based on these components as well as the long-term mean forms the time mean.

  2. Some of the open ridges can be included in the PMZ event using a larger speed as threshold.

  3. Ts′ derived by a formula similar to (2).

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Acknowledgements

P. Liu, L. Zhou, W. Hu, B. He, and R. Sukhdeo were partially supported by the National Weather Service under the grant NA15NWS4680015. M. Zhang was supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the US Department of Energy and by the National Science Foundation. G. Wu, Y. Liu, and P. Liu were partially supported by the NSFC under the grant 91437219. B. He, W. Hu and P. Liu were partially supported by the NSFC under the grant 41405091 and 41305065. NCEP-NCAR Reanalysis data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/. We acknowledge the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts for providing the ERA-Interim data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Endeavor Hall 199, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-5000, USA

    Ping Liu, Minghua Zhang & Raymond Sukhdeo

  2. Environmental Modeling Center, NCEP/NOAA/NWS, Silver Spring, USA

    Yuejian Zhu & Dingchen Hou

  3. Climate Prediction Center, NCEP/NOAA/NWS, Silver Spring, USA

    Qin Zhang & Jon Gottschalck

  4. LASG, IAP, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Guoxiong Wu, Yimin Liu, Bian He & Wenting Hu

  5. GFDL, NOAA, Princeton, USA

    Linjiong Zhou

  6. IMSG at Environmental Modeling Center, NCEP/NWS/NOAA, Silver Spring, USA

    Christopher Melhauser, Wei Li, Xiaqiong Zhou & Malaquias Peña

  7. SRG at Environmental Modeling Center, NCEP/NWS/NOAA, Silver Spring, USA

    Hong Guan

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  1. Ping Liu
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Correspondence to Ping Liu.

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Liu, P., Zhu, Y., Zhang, Q. et al. Climatology of tracked persistent maxima of 500-hPa geopotential height. Clim Dyn 51, 701–717 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3950-0

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