Abstract
Abstract. Polar lows are intense mesoscale cyclones that develop in polar marine air masses. Motivated by the large variety of their proposed intensification mechanisms, cloud structure, and ambient sub-synoptic environment, we use self-organising maps to classify polar lows. The method is applied to 370 polar lows in the north-eastern Atlantic, which were obtained by matching mesoscale cyclones from the ERA-5 reanalysis to polar lows registered in the STARS dataset by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. ERA-5 reproduces most of the STARS polar lows. We identify five different polar-low configurations which are characterised by the vertical wind shear vector, the change in the horizontal-wind vector with height, relative to the propagation direction. Four categories feature a strong shear with different orientations of the shear vector, whereas the fifth category contains conditions with weak shear. This confirms the relevance of a previously identified categorisation into forward- and reverse-shear polar lows. We expand the categorisation with right- and left-shear polar lows that propagate towards colder and warmer environments, respectively. For the strong-shear categories, the shear vector organises the moist-baroclinic dynamics of the systems. This is apparent in the low-pressure anomaly tilting with height against the shear vector and the main updrafts occurring along the warm front located in the forward-left direction relative to the shear vector. These main updrafts contribute to the intensification through latent heat release and are typically associated with comma-shaped clouds. Polar-low situations with a weak shear, which often feature spirali-form clouds, occur mainly at decaying stages of the development. We thus find no evidence for hurricane-like intensification of polar lows and propose instead that spirali-form clouds are associated with a warm seclusion process.
Highlights
Polar lows (PLs) are intense mesoscale cyclones with a typical diameter of 200–500 km and a short lifetime of 6–36 h that develop in marine cold-air outbreaks during the extended winter season (e.g. Rasmussen and Turner, 2003; Yanase et al, 2004; Claud et al, 2004; Renfrew, 2015; Rojo et al, 2015)
The multitude of paradigms demonstrates that our dynamical interpretation of these systems is still deficient (Jonassen et al, 2020). To further alleviate this shortcoming, we present a classification of PLs by their structure and sub-synoptic environment to identify the relevance of the proposed paradigms
This list includes the location and time of PLs detected from AVHRR satellite images over the northeastern Atlantic that were listed in the STARS dataset by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute between November 1999 and March 2019 (Noer and Lien, 2010)
Summary
Polar lows (PLs) are intense mesoscale cyclones with a typical diameter of 200–500 km and a short lifetime of 6–36 h that develop in marine cold-air outbreaks during the extended winter season (e.g. Rasmussen and Turner, 2003; Yanase et al, 2004; Claud et al, 2004; Renfrew, 2015; Rojo et al, 2015). PLs in forward-shear environments develop to typical mid-latitude cyclones in a deep-baroclinic zone with an associated upper-level jet. They have the cold air to the left with respect to their direction of propagation and mainly propagate eastward (Terpstra et al, 2016). The shear angle cannot distinguish between baroclinically and convectively driven systems, and it cannot address the hurricane-like part of the PL spectrum. To alleviate this shortcoming, we categorise PLs based on their sub-synoptic environment using self-organising maps The meteorological configurations identified thereby reveal the underlying PL intensification mechanisms, allowing us to investigate the following research questions
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