Summer Deep Depressions Increase Over the Eastern North Atlantic

• Published in: Geophysical research letters Vol. 51; no. 5
• Main Authors: D'Andrea, Fabio, Duvel, Jean‐Philippe, Rivière, Gwendal, Vautard, Robert, Cassou, Christophe, Cattiaux, Julien, Coumou, Dim, Faranda, Davide, Happé, Tamara, Jézéquel, Aglaé, Ribes, Aurelien, Yiou, Pascal
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington John Wiley & Sons, Inc 16-03-2024; American Geophysical Union; Wiley
• Subjects: Atmospheric depressions; Atmospheric dynamics; Atmospheric models; Baroclinic mode; Baroclinity; Climate and weather; Climate change; Climate models; Climate prediction; Coastal zone; Continental interfaces, environment; Cyclones; Extratropical cyclones; Extreme heat; Extreme high temperatures; Global climate; Global climate models; Heat; High temperature; Ocean, Atmosphere; Sciences of the Universe; Summer; Surface temperature; Temperature extremes; Temperature patterns; Weather
• ISSN: 0094-8276; 1944-8007
• DOI: 10.1029/2023GL104435

Mid‐tropospheric deep depressions in summer over the North Atlantic are shown to have strongly increased in the eastern and strongly decreased in the western North Atlantic region. This evolution is linked to a change in baroclinicity in the west of the North Atlantic ocean and over the North American coast, likely due to the increased surface temperature there. Deep depressions in the Eastern North Atlantic are linked to a temperature pattern typical of extreme heat events in the region. The same analysis is applied to a sample of CMIP6 model outputs, and no such trends are found. This study suggests a link between the observed increase of summer extreme heat events in the region and the increase of the number of Atlantic depressions. The failure of CMIP6 models to reproduce these events can consequently also reside in an incorrect reproduction of this specific feature of midlatitude atmospheric dynamics.
Plain Language Summary
Extreme temperatures events in Western Europe have been rising fast, and current global climate models are not able to reproduce this excess. There are different hypotheses to explain this discrepancy. One is that the large‐scale atmospheric dynamics, responsible for the local weather, is not correctly represented by the models: indeed, the frequency and amplitude of some specific weather phenomena have been shown to be insufficiently reproduced, especially in summer. Here, we study one such phenomenon, namely the transient deep depressions, or extratropical cyclones, that travel across the Atlantic basin. A significant large increase of the number of these events is found in summer in the region of the North Atlantic off the western European coast. Depressions in that region are accompanied by high temperatures in continental western Europe. An ensemble of state of the art climate models are also analyzed and none of them is able to correctly reproduce the frequency of deep depressions nor their large trend, which suggests a common origin with the insufficient prediction of western European extreme heat events. Great caution should be used when analyzing climate change predictions in the region, and even more so when studying changes in complex dynamical phenomena.
Key Points
Deep depression occurrences have significantly increased over the eastern side, and decreased over the western side of the North Atlantic
Deep depressions are linked to high surface temperature patterns in western continental Europe but have little impact on the mean warming
Global Climate Models fail to reproduce the observed trends in deep depressions correctly