Modified, threshold-based circulation type classification for Central Europe, on the basis of Lityński’s classification

Abstract

Abstract There are many classifications of atmospheric circulation types. In Poland, the most important one, used by Polish weather services, is the classification of circulation types developed by Lityński. This paper proposes four modifications to the currently used algorithm for determining atmospheric circulation types. The proposed algorithms have been compared and it has been shown which one produces a catalogue of circulation types in which the division of the distribution of the values of the three indices (the zonal index Ws, meridional index Wp and cyclonicity index Cp) into three classes is the closest to being equally likely. In 1986-2015, the classification scheme that deemed to be the best, differed in above 19% of cases from the currently used classification.