Back-to-back high category atmospheric river landfalls occur more often on the west coast of the United States

Zhou, Yang, Wehner, Michael and Collins, William ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4463-9848 (2024) Back-to-back high category atmospheric river landfalls occur more often on the west coast of the United States. Communications Earth and Environment, 5 (1). ISSN 2662-4435

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Abstract

The catastrophic December 2022-January 2023 nine atmospheric rivers in California underscore the urgent need to better understand such high-risk weather extremes. Here we applied a machine learning clustering tool to understand the activity of atmospheric river clusters. Reanalysis results show that clusters with high density, that is the time fraction under atmospheric river conditions within a cluster, exhibit more frequent high-category atmospheric rivers, alongside an increased likelihood for extreme precipitation and severe land surface responses. The key circulation patterns of atmospheric river clusters are primarily attributed to subseasonal variability. Furthermore, the occurrence and density of atmospheric river clusters are modulated by the daily variability of the geopotential height field. Climate model projections suggest that atmospheric river clusters with higher density and higher categories will be more frequent as warming level increases. Our findings emphasize the important role of atmospheric river clusters in the development of climate adaptation and resilience strategies.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability: The ERA5 data can be downloaded at: https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-pressure-levels. Both CPC precipitation and NARR are provided by the NOAA PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their website at https://psl.noaa.gov. The PRISM Climate Data can be downloaded from https://prism.oregonstate.edu/. The ARTMIP Tier 2 dataset can be retrieved from https://www.earthsystemgrid.org/dataset/ucar.cgd.artmip.html. The CESM2-LENS can be retrieved from https://www.earthsystemgrid.org/dataset/ucar.cgd.cesm2le.output.html. Processed data including the AR landfall flags and large-scale fields are archived in https://zenodo.org/records/10892381.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	general environmental science,general earth and planetary sciences,sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2300/2300
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	23 Jul 2026 08:53
Last Modified:	23 Jul 2026 08:53
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103945
DOI:	10.1038/s43247-024-01368-w

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