TY - JOUR
T1 - Climate and Hazardous Convective Weather
AU - Tippett, Michael K.
AU - Allen, John T.
AU - Gensini, Vittorio A.
AU - Brooks, Harold E.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments This study was supported by NOAA’s Climate Program Office’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections program award NA14OAR4310185, the Office of Naval Research award N00014-12-1-091, and a Columbia University Research Initiatives for Science and Engineering (RISE) award. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or any of its sub-agencies. The authors thank Noah Diffenbaugh for providing Fig. 8.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, The Author(s).
PY - 2015/6/1
Y1 - 2015/6/1
N2 - Substantial progress has been made recently relating the large-scale climate system and hazardous convective weather (HCW; tornadoes, hail, and damaging wind), particularly over the USA where there are large societal impacts and a long observational record. Despite observational data limitations, HCW has shown to be influenced by the climate system and the tropical atmosphere via the Madden-Julian Oscillation and El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Analysis of the atmospheric environments favorable to HCW (e.g., convective available potential energy and vertical wind shear) avoids observational and model limitations. While few robust trends are seen over recent decades, future climate projections indicate increased frequency of such environments over the USA, Europe, and Australia, suggesting increased future HCW activity. A recent increase in the year-to-year variability of US tornado occurrence is striking, but not yet understood. Dynamical downscaling to convection-permitting resolutions promises improved understanding of the relationships between large-scale climate and HCW occurrence.
AB - Substantial progress has been made recently relating the large-scale climate system and hazardous convective weather (HCW; tornadoes, hail, and damaging wind), particularly over the USA where there are large societal impacts and a long observational record. Despite observational data limitations, HCW has shown to be influenced by the climate system and the tropical atmosphere via the Madden-Julian Oscillation and El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Analysis of the atmospheric environments favorable to HCW (e.g., convective available potential energy and vertical wind shear) avoids observational and model limitations. While few robust trends are seen over recent decades, future climate projections indicate increased frequency of such environments over the USA, Europe, and Australia, suggesting increased future HCW activity. A recent increase in the year-to-year variability of US tornado occurrence is striking, but not yet understood. Dynamical downscaling to convection-permitting resolutions promises improved understanding of the relationships between large-scale climate and HCW occurrence.
KW - Climate change
KW - Climate variability
KW - Hail
KW - Severe thunderstorms
KW - Tornadoes
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85051773732&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s40641-015-0006-6
DO - 10.1007/s40641-015-0006-6
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85051773732
VL - 1
SP - 60
EP - 73
JO - Current Climate Change Reports
JF - Current Climate Change Reports
SN - 2198-6061
IS - 2
ER -