Standard climate models predicting that storm tracks in the Northern Hemisphere will move poleward as greenhouse-gas levels increase may not be telling the whole story. Refined simulations that resolve circulation changes in the middle atmosphere suggest that, in some regions, storms may move in the opposite direction.
Adam Scaife at the UK Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter and his colleagues compared the response of storms to changing greenhouse-gas levels in two standard climate models and in extended versions that include stratospheric changes.
The extended models project a shift of winter storm tracks in the Atlantic storm regions towards the Equator, accompanied by increased extreme winter rainfall over Western and Central Europe. Increased storminess and rainfall at mid-latitudes may substantially raise the risk of future flooding, the authors note.
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Storms shift with climate change. Nature 474, 544 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/474544d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/474544d
