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Sensitivity of the latitude of the westerly jet stream to climate forcing

Journal Article · · Geophysical Research Letters
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL086563· OSTI ID:1605422
 [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
  2. University of California, Los Angeles
  3. BATTELLE (PACIFIC NW LAB)
+ Show Author Affiliations
The latitude of the westerly jet stream is influenced by a variety of climate forcings. Their effects often manifest as a tug-of-war between tropical forcing, characterized by tropical upper-tropospheric warming, and polar forcing, with a signature of Antarctic stratospheric cooling or Arctic amplification. Here we present a unified forcing-feedback frame work relating different climate forcings to their forced jet changes, in which the interactions between the westerly jet and synoptic storms are synthesized by a zonal advection feedback, analogous to the feedback framework for assessing climate sensitivity. This framework is supported by a prototype feedback analysis in the atmospheric dynamical core of a climate model with diverse thermal and mechanical forcings. Our analysis indicates that the latitude of a westerly jet is most sensitive to the thermally-induced jet speed changes near the tropopause. The jet shift also displays a larger sensitivity than linearity for the equatorward shift.
Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1605422
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-150063
Journal Information:
Geophysical Research Letters, Journal Name: Geophysical Research Letters Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 47
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

atmospheric dynamics
atmospheric variability
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