The Regional Impact of Wet and Windy Extremes Over Europe, Following North American Cold Spells

Abstract

<p>Due to the compounding nature of co-occurring weather extremes, these events can be highly detrimental to economies, damaging to infrastructure and result in loss of life. Previous work has established a connection between cold spells over North America and extreme wet and windy weather over Europe. This work attempts to identify a statistical link between the regional impact of wet and windy extremes over Europe based on the regional impact of cold spells over North America. We identify cold spells for 41 overlapping regions over North America for full winter (DJF) seasons between 1979 and 2020 using ERA5 data, employing 4 methodologies for the computation of onset dates. The impact of extreme precipitation and wind events over 6 regions of western and central Europe is analysed. Consistent across all methodologies, cold spells over eastern and mid USA are followed by significant wind extremes over Iberia, whilst cold spells over eastern Canada are followed by significant wind extremes over northern Europe and the British Isles. The regional impact of precipitation extremes shows much greater variance, though we find significant Iberian and southern European precipitation for cold spells over eastern USA, consistent with that found for wind extremes. The majority of extreme precipitation and some significant wind extremes also precede the peak of the cold spell. We show also that the frequency of extreme precipitation and wind events over Iberia increases by 1.5 to more than 2 times the climatological frequency, following cold spells in most North American regions.</p>