Abstract
AbstractAtmospheric meridional energy transport into the Arctic plays an important role in Arctic weather and climate. The transport of latent energy in the form of water vapour strongly influences the Arctic atmosphere. The transport is achieved by circulation mechanisms on various scales and is largely comprised of extreme transport events. Here, we use a Fourier‐based method of dividing the latent energy transport into spatial scales and investigate the extent to which extreme events in latent energy transport on planetary and synoptic scales have changed over the past four decades, and how they influence the Arctic winter temperatures. We find that wintertime extreme transport events on planetary scales are associated with warm temperature anomalies across the entire Arctic, while the extreme events on synoptic scales have less impact on the Arctic temperatures. We show that over the past four decades, there has been a significant increase in the wintertime latent energy transport by planetary‐scale systems, and a decrease in synoptic‐scale transport. This shift may have contributed to the amplified warming observed in the Arctic winter over the past decades.
Highlights
The Arctic has warmed at a rate more than twice the global average over the past decades (Serreze and Francis, 2006; Serreze and Barry, 2011), and this Arctic amplification is strongest during the winter season (Bekryaev et al, 2010; Boisvert and Stroeve, 2015)
The wintertime latent energy transport on the synoptic and planetary scales accounts for 32% and 68% of the total wintertime transport, respectively
This trend is important as we find that extreme events in wintertime latent energy transport by planetary-scale systems are more closely associated with anomalous warming in the Arctic than extreme transport events by the synoptic-scale systems
Summary
The Arctic has warmed at a rate more than twice the global average over the past decades (Serreze and Francis, 2006; Serreze and Barry, 2011), and this Arctic amplification is strongest during the winter season (Bekryaev et al, 2010; Boisvert and Stroeve, 2015). The contribution by atmospheric energy transport to Arctic amplification has received increased attention. Energy transport into the Arctic has been shown to greatly alter the Arctic temperatures (Graversen et al, 2008), and plays an important role in the development of Arctic weather and climate (Graversen and Burtu, 2016; Woods and Caballero, 2016; Ding et al, 2017; Graham et al, 2017a). The transport of LE has been shown to have a stronger effect on near-surface temperatures as compared to that of DE (Koenigk et al, 2013; Graversen and Burtu, 2016). In addition to the LE that is released upon condensation, the water vapour in itself and the condensed cloud water act to increase the local greenhouse effect and the long-wave radiation downwards, hereby
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