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Zhou, Yang, O’Brien, Travis A., Collins, William D. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4463-9848, Shields, Christine A., Loring, Burlen and Elbashandy, Abdelrahman A.
(2022)
Characteristics and Variability of Winter Northern Pacific Atmospheric River Flavors.
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 127 (23).
ISSN 2169-897X
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Abstract
Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are intensive poleward moisture transport events that are essential to the global hydrological cycle and are often linked to extreme weather events. We categorize the winter North Pacific ARs into two “flavors”: wind-dominated (windy ARs) and moisture-dominated (wet ARs) using 40 years of hourly data from fifth generation of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim Reanalysis. We compare the differences between windy ARs and wet ARs including the lifecycle characteristics (such as genesis locations and changes of meteorological elements through the lifecycle), overall AR frequency, landfall impacts, and variability. The windy ARs are more likely to occur in the midlatitudes, while wet ARs are more active in the subtropics. Windy ARs are associated with intensive surface pressure lows, where the strong pressure gradient can support the strong wind within ARs. Due to larger size and longer lifetime, wet ARs are more likely to produce more precipitation over a lifecycle. By scaling the landfalling ARs, we show that wet ARs dominate the high-category ARs (Category 4 and 5) with higher spatial frequency and more precipitation, and windy ARs have higher contributions in the lower AR categories especially over British Columbia. Windy ARs are modulated by El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnections via the anomalous geopotential height and extended subtropical jet. Wet ARs are affected by the anomalous sea surface temperature over the midlatitudes related to ENSO. Sensitivity analysis with an alternate AR detection algorithm shows consistent results on AR flavors but with disagreement on the amplitude.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Data Availability Statement: The Guan and Waliser's (2015) AR detection code can be obtained from Guan (2021, https://doi.org/10.25346/S6/SJGRKY). The ERA5 reanalysis is downloaded from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store. The results contain modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2020. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains. The website is https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp%23%21/dataset/reanalysis%2Dera5%2Dpressure%2Dlevels%3Ftab%3Dform. The Extended Reconstructed SST v5 data is provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their website at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.noaa.ersst.v5.html. Documentations of TECA including installation and application examples are at https://github.com/LBL-EESA/TECA. Outputs from Zhou et al. (2018) can be obtained from Zhou et al. (2022, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6998797). |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | atmospheric river,enso,lifecycle,moisture transport,precipitation,u.s. west coast,geophysics,atmospheric science,space and planetary science,earth and planetary sciences (miscellaneous) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1900/1908 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 13 Jul 2026 10:34 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Jul 2026 15:40 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103827 |
| DOI: | 10.1029/2022JD037105 |
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