Intensity and structural changes of extreme mid-latitude cyclones change in a warming climate
Intense mid-latitude cyclones are one of the main weather hazards in Europe. They areassociated with strong winds and heavy precipitation which can lead to wind damage andflooding. It is therefore important to understand how mid-latitude storms will respond toclimate change, in order to predict future weather risks and to guide climate changeadaptation strategies. This project investigates cyclone-scale features like strong winds and fronts, with a focus on windstorms in the Atlantic-European sector. Overall, CyclEx consists of two parts. In the first part extreme cyclones are analyzed in global climate models (GCMs), in the second part they are analyzed in idealized simulations. These two parts enable us to bridge the gap between low-resolution climate models and small-scale processes that are better resolved in high-resolution simulation. In general, we aim to better understand (1) the cyclone dynamics under global climate change, (2) the relative impact of environmental and diabatic processes on the cyclone scale and (3) the consistency, ordifferences, of cyclone changes in high- versus low-resolution simulations.
Institution: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Contact: Joaquim Pinto , Aiko Voigt,Hilke Lentink