Shifts in large-scale circulation patterns can strongly alter the frequency and/or intensity of extremes and can thus have severe humanitarian impacts. Climate change over the last century has already altered some large scale circulation patterns but the uncertainties are large. This research aims to reduce uncertainties by providing fundamental insights in the general circulation, its stability and its extremes.
We propose to study the sensitivity of large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns on internal atmosphere-dynamical processes and forcings arising from changes in surface boundary conditions. The focus of the proposed research will be towards the extra-tropics, including storm tracks, Rossby waves and extreme weather, but will also address the tropical Hadley circulation. The goal is to quantify atmospheric teleconnections, internal atmosphere-dynamical and land-atmosphere feedbacks, and the impact these have on extreme weather events. New data analysis techniques will be applied to both novel atmospheric datasets and GCM results to quantify teleconnections. Further, specificallydesigned numerical experiments will be done to understand feedback processes using a hierarchy of modeling techniques: From conceptual, to statistical-dynamical atmosphere, to atmosphere general circulation, and fully-coupled Earth system models.
Model- and observation-based analysis of the stability of the preferred large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns and its influence on extreme weather events.
