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Linking Northern Hemisphere blocking and storm track biases in the CMIP5 climate models
Author(s) -
Zappa G.,
Masato G.,
Shaffrey L.,
Woollings T.,
Hodges K.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2013gl058480
Subject(s) - storm track , blocking (statistics) , extratropical cyclone , climatology , northern hemisphere , environmental science , storm , cyclone (programming language) , climate model , tropical cyclone , atmospheric sciences , climate change , meteorology , geology , oceanography , geography , statistics , mathematics , field programmable gate array , computer science , computer hardware
The relationship between biases in Northern Hemisphere (NH) atmospheric blocking frequency and extratropical cyclone track density is investigated in 12 CMIP5 climate models to identify mechanisms underlying climate model biases and inform future model development. Biases in the Greenland blocking and summer Pacific blocking frequencies are associated with biases in the storm track latitudes, while biases in winter European blocking frequency are related to the North Atlantic storm track tilt and Mediterranean cyclone density. However, biases in summer European and winter Pacific blocking appear less related with cyclone track density. Furthermore, the models with smaller biases in winter European blocking frequency have smaller biases in the cyclone density in Europe, which suggests that they are different aspects of the same bias. This is not found elsewhere in the NH. The summer North Atlantic and the North Pacific mean CMIP5 track density and blocking biases might therefore have different origins.