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Baek, Seung H., McClenny, Elizabeth E., Ullrich, Paul A., Quagraine, Kwesi T. and Collins, William D. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4463-9848
(2025)
Response of Atmospheric River Width and Intensity to Aquaplanet Warming: A Detection Algorithm- and Background Moisture-Independent Approach.
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 130 (13).
ISSN 2169-897X
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Abstract
The width of an atmospheric river (AR) is an important parameter when evaluating its impact. Although previous research suggests ARs will widen with global warming, a precise response has been muddled by the large sensitivity of width to a diverse set of AR detection techniques (ARDTs). Here, we propose a methodology that removes the influence of the ARDT by modeling AR-integrated vapor transport (IVT) profiles as idealized exponential curves with free parameters given by background IVT, intensity above background IVT, and profile width. Notably, our definition for AR profile width does not include any explicit numerical thresholds, relative or absolute, for IVT. We apply our approach to a series of idealized aquaplanet experiments, first with a baseline sea surface temperature (SST) distribution, and then with +2K, +4K, and +6K uniform warming, so as to determine the contributions of each free parameter to AR width. We also apply our approach to high-resolution atmosphere-only models forced with SSTs modified to preserve historical variability but following projected warming over 2016–2050. Our results show that contributions to impacts-relevant AR widening comes primarily from enhancements in background IVT and AR intensity, as opposed to from dynamic width changes.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Data Availability Statement: All data used in this study are publicly available. IVT and TempestExtremes catalogs for (a) the CESM2 uniformwarming experiments and (b) the CMCC‐CM2‐VHR4 and MPI‐ESM1‐2‐HR highresSST experiments areavailable at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wstqjq2zb (Baek, 2025a) (integrated water vapor is also included forthe CESM2 experiments). The CESM2 experiments were generated at University of California, Davis. ThehighresSST experiments, including SST and sea ice forcing data, are available at https://highresmip.org/(HighResMIP, 2025). The TempestExtremes AR detection software is available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15320218 (Baek, 2025b). |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | 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: | 16 Jul 2026 15:57 |
| Last Modified: | 19 Jul 2026 05:37 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103917 |
| DOI: | 10.1029/2025JD043367 |
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