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Understanding dynamical processes leading to atmospheric extreme events in the extratropics
 

In large parts of the extratropics, severe weather in the form of very intense rainfall, snowstorms, strong surface winds, and heat waves is associated with distinct dynamical processes, often related to extratropical cyclones and anticyclones. These weather systems are everyday features on surface weather charts, but their detailed structure and evolution, and the involved physical processes all reveal a fascinating degree of case-to-case variability. As an effect, there is also a huge variability of their impact, with only a few of them causing extreme weather. In this seminar a selection of different types of extreme weather events (mainly in North America), and different diagnostic approaches to identify the involved processes will be presented. This will serve to illustrate the linkage between weather systems, their dynamics, and extreme weather. The main conclusions will be that (i) variability is huge - there is for instance not a single type of cyclone that can produce extreme weather, (ii) scale interactions are very important, in particular between Rossby wave dynamics, baroclinic instability, atmospheric water vapor transport, cloud formation and latent heating, and (iii) the combination of Eulerian and Lagrangian diagnostics is valuable to further improve the understanding of processes leading to atmospheric extreme events.

 

About This Series

The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars take place on Monday from 12-1pm. Contact paoc-colloquium-comm@mit.edu for more information and Zoom password.

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