Study of the relationship between geopotential height anomaly over Europe and extreme abnormal weather over the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East during December 2013

Abstract

The Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East (EMME) is suffering from abnormal cooling of weather conditions and existence of an extreme weather phenomenon known as ice storm Alexa. The present paper investigates the weather conditions over Europe that causes this abnormal weather over the EMME through December of 2013. Daily data sets of several meteorological elements (temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, sea level pressure, and geopotential height at level 500 hPa, etc.) over the northern hemisphere, including Europe and EMME of December of 2013, have been used through the present work. In addition, to that, a time cross section analysis of the daily operational data for meteorological elements (mean surface temperature, temperature and geopotential height at level 500 hPa, relative humidity, precipitation rate, and sea surface pressure) was done over the EMME for December 2013. The methodology of anomaly and correlation coefficient techniques for the data sets has been used. The results uncovered that the EMME has abnormal and very cold weather conditions due to the inference of meridional blocking persisted over Europe and the existence of the extremely negative geopotential height anomaly aloft over Eastern Europe throughout this month.