Quantifying intra-regime weather variability for energy applications

• Main Authors: Gerighausen, Judith, Dorrington, Joshua, Osman, Marisol, Grams, Christian M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 08-08-2024
• Subjects: Physics - Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2408.04302

Weather regimes describe the large-scale atmospheric circulation in the
mid-latitudes in terms of a few circulation states that modulate regional
surface weather. Subseasonal forecasts of prevailing weather regimes have
proven skillful and valuable to energy applications. Previous studies have
mainly focused on the mean surface weather associated with a regime. However,
we show in this paper that variability of surface weather within a regime
cannot be ignored. These intra-regime variations, caused by different
`subflavors' of the same regime, can be captured by continuous regime indices
and allow a refined application of weather regimes. Here we discuss wintertime
temperature and wind speed regime anomalies for four selected countries, and
provide guidance on the operational use and interpretation of regime forecasts.
In an accompanying supplementary dataset we provide similar analysis for all
European countries, seasons and key energy variables, useful as an applied
reference.