Persistent cold air outbreaks over North America in a warming climate
Abstract
This study examines future changes of cold air outbreaks (CAO) using a multi-model ensemble of global climate simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 as well as regional high resolution climate simulations. In the future, while robust decrease of CAO duration dominates in most regions, the magnitude of decrease over northwestern U.S. is much smaller than the surrounding regions. We identified statistically significant increases in sea level pressure during CAO events centering over Yukon, Alaska, and Gulf of Alaska that advects continental cold air to northwestern U.S., leading to blocking and CAO events. Changes in large scale circulation contribute to about 50% of the enhanced sea level pressure anomaly conducive to CAO in northwestern U.S. in the future. High resolution regional simulations revealed potential contributions of increased existing snowpack to increased CAO in the near future over the Rocky Mountain, southwestern U.S., and Great Lakes areas through surface albedo effects, despite winter mean snow water equivalent decreases in the future. Overall, the multi-model projections emphasize that cold extremes do not completely disappear in a warming climate. Concomitant with the relatively smaller reduction in CAO events in northwestern U.S., the top 5 most extreme CAO events may still occurmore »
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1222438
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1182878
- Grant/Contract Number:
- KP1703010; AC05-76RL01830
- Resource Type:
- Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research Letters
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Environmental Research Letters Journal Volume: 10 Journal Issue: 4; Journal ID: ISSN 1748-9326
- Publisher:
- IOP Publishing
- Country of Publication:
- United Kingdom
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; cold air outbreaks; sea level pressure; snow water equivalent; wind chill warning
Citation Formats
Gao, Yang, Leung, L. Ruby, Lu, Jian, and Masato, Giacomo. Persistent cold air outbreaks over North America in a warming climate. United Kingdom: N. p., 2015.
Web. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044001.
Gao, Yang, Leung, L. Ruby, Lu, Jian, & Masato, Giacomo. Persistent cold air outbreaks over North America in a warming climate. United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044001
Gao, Yang, Leung, L. Ruby, Lu, Jian, and Masato, Giacomo. Mon .
"Persistent cold air outbreaks over North America in a warming climate". United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044001.
@article{osti_1222438,
title = {Persistent cold air outbreaks over North America in a warming climate},
author = {Gao, Yang and Leung, L. Ruby and Lu, Jian and Masato, Giacomo},
abstractNote = {This study examines future changes of cold air outbreaks (CAO) using a multi-model ensemble of global climate simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 as well as regional high resolution climate simulations. In the future, while robust decrease of CAO duration dominates in most regions, the magnitude of decrease over northwestern U.S. is much smaller than the surrounding regions. We identified statistically significant increases in sea level pressure during CAO events centering over Yukon, Alaska, and Gulf of Alaska that advects continental cold air to northwestern U.S., leading to blocking and CAO events. Changes in large scale circulation contribute to about 50% of the enhanced sea level pressure anomaly conducive to CAO in northwestern U.S. in the future. High resolution regional simulations revealed potential contributions of increased existing snowpack to increased CAO in the near future over the Rocky Mountain, southwestern U.S., and Great Lakes areas through surface albedo effects, despite winter mean snow water equivalent decreases in the future. Overall, the multi-model projections emphasize that cold extremes do not completely disappear in a warming climate. Concomitant with the relatively smaller reduction in CAO events in northwestern U.S., the top 5 most extreme CAO events may still occur in the future, and wind chill warning will continue to have societal impacts in that region.},
doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044001},
journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
number = 4,
volume = 10,
place = {United Kingdom},
year = {Mon Mar 30 00:00:00 EDT 2015},
month = {Mon Mar 30 00:00:00 EDT 2015}
}
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https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044001
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044001
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