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Atmospheric blocking and its relation to jet changes in a future climate

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Abstract

The future changes of atmospheric blocking over the Euro-Atlantic sector, diagnosed from an ensemble of 17 global-climate simulations obtained with the ECHAM5/MPI-OM model, are shown to be largely explainable from the change of the 500 hPa mean zonal circulation and its variance. The reduction of the blocking frequency over the Atlantic and the increased frequency of easterly upper-level flow poleward of 60°N are well explained by the changes of mean zonal circulation. In winter and autumn an additional downstream shift of the frequency maximum is simulated. This is also seen in a subset of the CMIP5 models with RCP8.5. To explain this downstream shift requires the inclusion of the changing variance. It is suggested that the increased downstream variance is caused by the stronger, more eastward extending future jet, which promotes Rossby wave breaking and blocking to occur further downstream. The same relation between jet-strength and central-blocking longitude is found in the variability of the current climate.

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Notes

  1. Note that these criteria are the same as in Tibaldi and Molteni (1990), but transformed to the variable UG500.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute KNMI, 201, 3730 AE, De Bilt, The Netherlands

    Hylke de Vries, Reindert J. Haarsma & Wilco Hazeleger

  2. Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading, RG6 6BB, UK

    Tim Woollings

  3. Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    James Anstey

Authors
  1. Hylke de Vries
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  2. Tim Woollings
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  3. James Anstey
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  4. Reindert J. Haarsma
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  5. Wilco Hazeleger
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hylke de Vries.

Appendix

Appendix

1.1 Uncertainty estimation

Non-parametric bootstrap (von Storch and Zwiers 2003) is used to determine confidence intervals for seasonal mean blocking frequencies. For each period, 1,000 artificial 17-member ensembles were generated by randomly selecting (with replacement) seasonal blocking frequency patterns from the Essence ensemble. The underlying assumption for the bootstrap is that seasonal blocking frequencies are uncorrelated. Also 10,000 artificial 1-member ensembles were generated in the same way, to estimate uncertainties in 30-year blocking frequencies.

1.2 TM-index for other latitudes

Figures 9 and 10 show the two-dimensional blocking frequency patterns obtained for the TM-index.

Fig. 9
figure 9

Two-dimensional seasonal TM-index (contours, drawn at 2x% with x = (−5,5) indicated by the labels) and 100-year trend (Shading, units %). Areas where the trend is not significant at 90 % confidence level according to a standard t test have been crossed. (bottom row) As top row, but for persistent blocking (≥ 5 days)

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Fig. 10
figure 10

As in Fig. 9 but for persistent blocking (≥ 5 days)

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de Vries, H., Woollings, T., Anstey, J. et al. Atmospheric blocking and its relation to jet changes in a future climate. Clim Dyn 41, 2643–2654 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1699-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1699-7

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