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Heat waves in Central Europe and their circulation conditions
Author(s) -
Tomczyk Arkadiusz M.,
Bednorz Ewa
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/joc.4381
Subject(s) - climatology , heat wave , period (music) , atmospheric circulation , environmental science , precipitable water , circulation (fluid dynamics) , percentile , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , geology , geography , oceanography , climate change , precipitation , mathematics , physics , statistics , acoustics , thermodynamics
The research objectives were to describe heat waves (HWs) in Central Europe and define the synoptic situations that cause their occurrence. In this article, a hot day was defined as a day when the maximum temperature was above the 95th annual percentile and an HW was considered a sequence of at least five hot days. In the analysed multi‐year period and study area, 11 HWs were observed in the north and 51 HWs were observed in the south. The occurrence of HWs was mainly connected with positive anomalies of sea level pressure and with the 500 hPa level, which shows the presence of high‐pressure systems. HWs were also accompanied by positive T850 and precipitable water ( PW ) anomalies.