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The intensification of winter mid-latitude storm tracks in the Southern Hemisphere

Nature Climate Change volume 12, pages 553–557 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

The strength of mid-latitude storm tracks shapes weather and climate phenomena in the extra-tropics, as these storm tracks control the daily to multi-decadal variability of precipitation, temperature and winds. By the end of this century, winter mid-latitude storms are projected to intensify in the Southern Hemisphere, with large consequences over the entire extra-tropics. Therefore, it is critical to be able to accurately assess the impacts of anthropogenic emissions on these storms to improve societal preparedness for future changes. Here we show that current climate models severely underestimate the intensification in mid-latitude storm tracks in recent decades. Specifically, the intensification obtained from reanalyses has already reached the model-projected end-of-the-century intensification. The biased intensification is found to be linked to biases in the zonal flow. These results question the ability of climate models to accurately predict the future impacts of anthropogenic emissions in the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes.

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Fig. 1: Recent changes in Southern Hemisphere winter mid-latitude storm tracks.
Fig. 2: Time of emergence of mid-latitude storm tracks.
Fig. 3: Linear normal-mode instability analysis.

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Data availability

The data used in the manuscript are publicly available: CMIP6 data (https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip6/), NCEP2 (https://psl.noaa.gov/), JRA-55 (https://rda.ucar.edu/), ERA-I and ERA5 (https://www.ecmwf.int), NOAA-CIRES-DOE (https://www.psl.noaa.gov) and CESM (https://www.cesm.ucar.edu/projects/community-projects/LENS/data-sets.html).

Code availability

Any codes used in the manuscript are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6434217.

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Acknowledgements

R.C. is grateful to the WIS support of young scientists and to A. Novoselsky for downloading the data.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Rei Chemke

  2. NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Yi Ming

  3. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Janni Yuval

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Contributions

R.C. analysed the data and together with Y.M. and J.Y. discussed and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Rei Chemke.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Recent trends in Southern Hemisphere winter mid-latitude storm tracks.

The mean of all 10-year, 20-year and 30-year trends over the 1979-2018 period in a, eddy kinetic energy and b, poleward eddy moist static energy flux in reanalyses mean (blue) and CMIP6 mean (gray). The black circles show the trends from the individual reanalyses/models.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Latitudinal distribution of poleward eddy moist static energy flux trends.

The 1979-2018 trends in poleward eddy moist static energy flux as a function of latitude in reanalyses mean (blue line) and CMIP6 mean (black line). Shadings show two standard deviations across reanalyses/CMIP6 models.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Variability of winter mid-latitude storm tracks trends.

One standard deviation across all 10-year, 20-year and 30-year trends in a, eddy kinetic energy and b, poleward eddy moist static energy flux in reanalyses mean (blue), CMIP6 mean (gray), and pre-industrial runs (red). The trends in CMIP6 and reanalyses were calculated over the detrended 1979-2018 period. The black circles show the results from individual reanalyses/models.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Recent trends in the meridional structure of the zonal wind.

The 1979-2018 trends in the second meridional derivative of the tropospheric (averaged between 850 mb − 300 mb) mean zonal wind, \(\frac{\partial }{r\partial \phi }\frac{1}{r\cos \phi }\frac{\partial \bar{u}\cos \phi }{\partial \phi }\), in mean reanalyses (blue lines) and CMIP6 models (black lines). Shadings show the 95% confidence interval of the trends. The vertical lines mark the climatological position of the mean zonal wind’s core in reanalyses mean (blue) and CMIP6 models (black). Green line marks the zero line. The latitudinal structure is smoothed with a 3-point running mean for plotting purposes.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Recent trends in eddy momentum flux convergence.

The 1979-2018 trends in vertically averaged eddy momentum flux convergence, \(-\frac{1}{r{\cos }^{2}\phi }\frac{\partial \overline{{u}^{\prime}{v}^{\prime}}{\cos }^{2}\phi }{\partial \phi }\), in mean reanalyses (blue lines) and CMIP6 models (black lines). Shadings show the 95% confidence interval of the trends. The vertical lines mark the climatological position of the mean zonal wind’s core in reanalyses mean (blue) and CMIP6 models (black). Green line marks the zero line. The latitudinal structure is smoothed with a 3-point running mean for plotting purposes.

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Chemke, R., Ming, Y. & Yuval, J. The intensification of winter mid-latitude storm tracks in the Southern Hemisphere. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 553–557 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01368-8

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