Interactions between Extratropical Cyclones and Atmospheric Rivers

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Meteorology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 March 2022) | Viewed by 524

Special Issue Editors

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA 92037, USA
Interests: weather and climate extremes; regional climate change; subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) predictability; dynamic downscaling techniques
Portland State University, Portland, OR 97207, USA
Interests: atmospheric rivers and hydroclimate; mesoscale atmospheric dynamics; cloud microphysics; aerosol–cloud effects; predictability and forecasting of extreme precipitation
ESSIC (Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center)/University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, USA
Interests: large-scale climate dynamics and climate variability; remote sensing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As the primary cool-season storm type in the midlatitudes, extratropical cyclones (ETCs) play an important role in both regional climate and daily weather. ETCs are associated with most of the extreme winter weather events through producing heavy precipitation and strong surface wind. Because of the tremendous societal and environmental impacts, ETCs have been studied for more than a century. On the other hand, the concept of an “atmospheric river” (AR) was introduced in the early 1990s and has only recently gained global focus across the disciplines of hydroclimate, atmospheric science, and meteorology. ARs are directly linked to water vapor transport and particularly important to delivering precipitation to many highly populated regions of the globe, such as Western Europe, the Pacific Coast of South America, and the US West Coast. ARs have been assigned several formal or functional definitions. All definitions contain the distinct feature of AR geometry: a long, narrow, and transient corridor of strong horizontal water vapor transport, while more detailed definitions have attempted to formalize a relationship between ETCs and ARs. Specifically, ARs are often located over the low-level jet region in the warm sector of the ETC circulation between the polar cold front and the warm front.

Although ARs are always linked to ETCs, a consensus has not been reached regarding the mutual interaction between ARs and ETCs. Some studies considered AR as a portion of the ETC system, while other studies suggested that AR and ETC are distinct from each other. Recent studies show that the associated ETC and AR pairs may intensify rapidly due to the positive feedback of diabatic processes between them. This positive feedback may play a role in extratropical cyclogenesis and in strengthening or steering the AR, suggesting a complex relationship between the ETC and AR lifecycle that has not been fully described in the existing literature. Following the few studies to explore the ETC-AR link, there is an urgent need to better understand the interactions between ETCs and ARs.

Topics of interest for this Special Issue include but are not limited to:

  • Influence of ETC–AR interactions on local precipitation and the water cycle;
  • Natural hazards presented by interacting ETCs and ARs;
  • Synoptic scale and mesoscale dynamics of ETC–AR interactions;
  • Numerical modeling of ETC–AR interactions;
  • Future changes in ETC–AR interactions under global warming;
  • Coupled ETC–AR lifecycle including external phenomena, such as tropical moisture exports, the Madden–Julian Oscillation, and secondary cyclogenesis.

Dr. Zhenhai Zhang
Dr. Andrew Martin
Dr. Yanjuan Guo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • extratropical cyclone
  • atmospheric river
  • predictability of precipitation
  • compound hazards
  • synoptic scale dynamics
  • mesoscale dynamics
  • regional climate change
  • tropical/extratropical connections

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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