Group seminar on 17. May, 14:15 CET
Northern Hemisphere Stationary Waves in a Changing Climate (review)
Iana Strigunova
Future changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation, an important driver for local and regional extremes (heat waves), are uncertain. The stationary part of the large-scale circulation is known as the stationary Rossby waves. The study of Wills et al. (2019) unveils how Northern Hemisphere stationary waves respond to climate change in winter and summer by comparing outputs of CMIP5 models across different metrics within the troposphere. The robust responses are shifts in the dominant wind patterns leading to changes in regional climate and weather extreme events. For boreal summer, there is an overall weakening of the baroclinic part of the stationary wave circulation with some regional variations such as the poleward shift of the atmospheric circulation at midlatitudes. The proposed mechanisms differ in signs and, therefore, leave open the question of the stationary waves response to climate change.