From Atmospheric Waves to Heatwaves: A Waveguide Perspective for Understanding and Predicting Concurrent, Persistent, and Extreme Extratropical Weather

Abstract

A notable number of high-impact weather extremes have occurred in recent years, often associated with persistent, strongly meandering atmospheric circulation patterns known as Rossby waves. Because of the high societal and ecosystem impacts, it is of great interest to be able to accurately project how such extreme events will change with climate change, and to predict these events on seasonal-to-subseasonal (S2S) time scales. There are multiple physical links connecting upper-atmosphere circulation patterns to surface weather extremes, and it is asking a lot of our dynamical models to accurately simulate all of these. Subsequently, our confidence in future projections and S2S forecasts of extreme events connected to Rossby waves remains relatively low. We also lack full fundamental theories for the growth and propagation of Rossby waves on the spatial and temporal scales relevant to extreme events, particularly under strongly nonlinear conditions. By focusing on one of the first links in the chain from upper-atmospheric conditions to surface extremes—the Rossby waveguide—it may be possible to circumvent some model biases in later links. To further our understanding of the nature of waveguides, links to persistent surface weather events and their representation in models, we recommend exploring these links in model hierarchies of increasing complexity, developing fundamental theory, exploiting novel large ensemble datasets, harnessing deep learning, and increased community collaboration. This would help increase understanding and confidence in both S2S predictions of extremes and of projections of the impact of climate change on extreme weather events.