Blocking and its Response to Climate Change

By T. Woollings, D. Barriopedro, J. Methven, S. Son, Olivia Martius, B. Harvey, J. Sillmann, A. Lupo, Sonia I. Seneviratne. Current Climate Change Reports, 2018

465 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Purpose of ReviewAtmospheric blocking events represent some of the most high-impact weather patterns in the mid-latitudes, yet they have often been a cause for concern in future climate projections. There has been low confidence in predicted future changes in blocking, despite relatively good agreement between climate models on a decline in blocking. This is due to the lack of a comprehensive theory of blocking and a pervasive underestimation of blocking occurrence by models. This paper reviews the state of knowledge regarding blocking under climate change, with the aim of providing an overview for those working in related fields.Recent FindingsSeveral avenues have been identified by which blocking can be improved in numerical models, though a fully reliable simulation remains elusive (at least, beyond a few days lead time). Models are therefore starting to provide some useful information on how blocking and its impacts may change in the future, although deeper understanding of the processes at play will be needed to increase confidence in model projections. There are still major uncertainties regarding the processes most important to the onset, maintenance and decay of blocking and advances in our understanding of atmospheric dynamics, for example in the role of diabatic processes, continue to inform the modelling and prediction efforts.SummaryThe term ‘blocking’ covers a diverse array of synoptic patterns, and hence a bewildering range of indices has been developed to identify events. Results are hence not considered fully trustworthy until they have been found using several different methods. Examples of such robust results are the underestimation of blocking by models, and an overall decline in future occurrence, albeit with a complex regional and seasonal variation. In contrast, hemispheric trends in blocking over the recent historical period are not supported by different methods, and natural variability will likely dominate regional variations over the next few decades.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/862e8e480ee6ef5c4a527d79536fbc6068f8e498

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atmospheric Science

1. Sandrine Bony
2. J. Dufresne
3. J. Vial
4. M. Widmann
5. I. Musat
6. Mathieu Vrac
7. J. Vialard
8. Eric Guilyardi

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Sandrine Bony
2. J. Dufresne
3. J. Vial
4. Mathieu Vrac
5. Valerio Lucarini
6. J. Vialard
7. M. Widmann
8. I. Musat

Citations in the corpus

• Presentation and Evaluation of the IPSL‐CM6A‐LR Climate Model (2020, background): “For a comprehensive review on blocking physics and climatology, the reader is referred to Woollings et al. (2018).”
• Extreme weather events in early summer 2018 connected by a recurrent hemispheric wave-7 pattern (2018, background): “have shown that upward trends over a relatively short period are difficult to assess [48] and traditional blocking indices also showno changes in summer [49].”
• The role of latent heating in atmospheric blocking dynamics: a global climatology (2019, background): “(1997), Michel and Rivière (2011) and Drouard and Woollings (2018) that blocking onset over Europe is frequently supported by an incoming quasi-stationary Rossby wave train extending from the subtropical western Atlantic.”
• Increased probability of compound long-duration dry and hot events in Europe during summer (1950–2013) (2019, background): “The weak variations seen in D align with studies on changes in blocking frequency which is expected to be dominated by natural variability in the coming decades (Woollings et al 2018).”
• The physics of climate variability and climate change (2019, background): “…major climatic processes, such as ENSO in the Tropical Pacific (Bellenger et al., 2014; Lu et al., 2018), the Indian Monsoon (Boos and Hurley, 2013; Hasson et al., 2013; Turner and Annamalai, 2012), and mid-latitude LFV associated with blocking (Davini and D’Andrea, 2016; Woollings et al., 2018).”