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Probability of US heat waves affected by a subseasonal planetary wave pattern

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 1056–1061 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Heat waves are thought to result from subseasonal atmospheric variability. Atmospheric phenomena driven by tropical convection, such as the Asian monsoon, have been considered potential sources of predictability on subseasonal timescales. Mid-latitude atmospheric dynamics have been considered too chaotic to allow significant prediction skill of lead times beyond the typical 10-day range of weather forecasts. Here we use a 12,000-year integration of an atmospheric general circulation model to identify a pattern of subseasonal atmospheric variability that can help improve forecast skill for heat waves in the United States. We find that heat waves tend to be preceded by 15–20 days by a pattern of anomalous atmospheric planetary waves with a wavenumber of 5. This circulation pattern can arise as a result of internal atmospheric dynamics and is not necessarily linked to tropical heating. We conclude that some mid-latitude circulation anomalies that increase the probability of heat waves are predictable beyond the typical weather forecast range.

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Figure 1: Comparison of the model heat wave statistics with observations.
Figure 2: Temporal evolution of the heat waves.
Figure 3: Prominent subseasonal variability patterns.
Figure 4: Probability of the heat waves in CAM3 conditioned on the standardized amplitude of the wavenumber-5 pattern 15 days earlier (red bars).

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Change history

  • 30 October 2013

    In the version of this Article originally published online, the NOAA CPO's MAPP program was missing from the Acknowledgements. This has been corrected in all versions of the Article.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Mai for carrying out the experiment and S. Schubert for comments. Portions of this study were supported by the Office of Science (BER), US Department of Energy, NASA NEWS, NOAA CPO's MAPP program and the National Science Foundation. NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Computing resources were provided by NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by BER of the US Department of Energy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA

    Haiyan Teng, Grant Branstator, Gerald A. Meehl & Warren M. Washington

  2. SSAI, Hampton, Virginia 23666, USA

    Hailan Wang

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  1. Haiyan Teng
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  2. Grant Branstator
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H.T. and G.B. led the analysis and all authors contributed to writing of the paper.

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Correspondence to Haiyan Teng.

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Teng, H., Branstator, G., Wang, H. et al. Probability of US heat waves affected by a subseasonal planetary wave pattern. Nature Geosci 6, 1056–1061 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1988

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