Search Results for: extreme weather

Author: Sung, Mi-Kyung; Son, Seok-Woo; Yoo, Changhyun; Hwang, Jaeyoung; An, Soon-Il Description: In recent winters, there have been repeated observations of extreme warm and cold spells in the midlatitude countries. This has evoked questions regarding how winter temperature extremes are induced. In this study, we demonstrate that abnormally warm winter weather in East Asia can drive the onset of extremely cold weather in North America approximately one week forward. These seesawing extremes across the basin are mediated by the North Pacific Oscillation (NPO), one of the recurrent atmospheric patterns over…

Author: Cohen, Judah; Agel, Laurie; Barlow, Mathew; Garfinkel, Chaim I.; White, Ian Description: The Arctic is warming at a rate twice the global average and severe winter weather is reported to be increasing across many heavily populated mid-latitude regions, but there is no agreement on whether a physical link exists between the two phenomena. We use observational analysis to show that a lesser-known stratospheric polar vortex (SPV) disruption that involves wave reflection and stretching of the SPV is linked with extreme cold across parts of Asia and North America, including…

Author: Touma, Danielle; Stevenson, Samantha; Swain, Daniel L.; Singh, Deepti; Kalashnikov, Dmitri A.; Huang, Xingying Description: Post-wildfire extreme rainfall events can have destructive impacts in the western United States. Using two climate model large ensembles, we assess the future risk of extreme fire weather events being followed by extreme rainfall in this region. By mid-21st century, in a high warming scenario (RCP8.5), we report large increases in the number of extreme fire weather events followed within 1 year by at least one extreme rainfall event. By 2100, the frequency of…

Author: Cohen, J.; Pfeiffer, K. & Francis, J. A. Description: Recent boreal winters have exhibited a large-scale seesaw temperature pattern characterized by an unusually warm Arctic and cold continents. Whether there is any physical link between Arctic variability and Northern Hemisphere (NH) extreme weather is an active area of research. Using a recently developed index of severe winter weather, we show that the occurrence of severe winter weather in the United States is significantly related to anomalies in pan-Arctic geopotential heights and temperatures. As the Arctic transitions from a relatively…

Author: Yin, J., Griffies, S. M., Winton, M., Zhao, M., & Zanna, L. Description: Storm surge and coastal flooding caused by tropical cyclones (hurricanes) and extratropical cyclones (nor’easters) pose a threat to communities along the Atlantic coast of the United States. Climate change and sea level rise are altering the statistics of these extreme events in a rather complex fashion. Here we use a fully coupled global weather/climate modeling system (GFDL CM4) to study characteristics of extreme daily sea level (ESL) along the U.S. Atlantic coast and their response to…

Author: Huang, Yuanyuan; Stein, Gideon; Kolle, Olaf; Kübler, Karl; Schulze, Ernst-Detlef; Dong, Hui; Eichenberg, David; Gleixner, Gerd; Hildebrandt, Anke; Lange, Markus; Roscher, Christiane; Schielzeth, Holger; Schmid, Bernhard; Weigelt, Alexandra; Weisser, Wolfgang W.; Shadaydeh, Maha; Denzler, Joachim; Ebeling, Anne; Eisenhauer, Nico Description: Extreme weather events are occurring more frequently, and research has shown that plant diversity can help mitigate the impacts of climate change by increasing plant productivity and ecosystem stability. Although soil temperature and its stability are key determinants of essential ecosystem processes, no study has yet investigated whether plant…

Author: Francis, Jennifer A.; Skific, Natasa; Vavrus, Steven J.; Cohen, Judah Description: The term “weather whiplash” was recently coined to describe abrupt swings in weather conditions from one extreme to another, such as from a prolonged, frigid cold spell to anomalous warmth or from drought to heavy precipitation. These events are often highly disruptive to agriculture, ecosystems, and daily activities. In this study, we propose and demonstrate a novel metric to identify weather whiplash events (WWEs) and track their frequency over time. We define a WWE as a transition from…

Author: Ratter-Rieck, Jacqueline M.; Roden, Michael; Herder, Christian Description: Climate change will be a major challenge for the world’s health systems in the coming decades. Elevated temperatures and increasing frequencies of heat waves, wildfires, heavy precipitation and other weather extremes can affect health in many ways, especially if chronic diseases are already present. Impaired responses to heat stress, including compromised vasodilation and sweating, diabetes-related comorbidities, insulin resistance and chronic low-grade inflammation make people with diabetes particularly vulnerable to environmental risk factors, such as extreme weather events and air pollution. Additionally,…

Author: Grigorieva, Elena; Lukyanets, Artem Description: Association between short-term exposure to ambient air pollution and respiratory health is well documented. At the same time, it is widely known that extreme weather events intrinsically exacerbate air pollution impact. Particularly, hot weather and extreme temperatures during heat waves (HW) significantly affect human health, increasing risks of respiratory mortality and morbidity. Concurrently, a synergistic effect of air pollution and high temperatures can be combined with weather-air pollution interaction during wildfires. The purpose of the current review is to summarize literature on interplay of…