Climatology of Lyapunov exponents: the link between atmospheric rivers and large-scale mixing variability

Garaboa-Paz, Daniel; Eiras-Barca, Jorge; Pérez-Muñuzuri, Vicente

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-865-2017

Articles | Volume 8, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-865-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

The 8th EGU Leonardo Conference: From evaporation to precipitation:...

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-865-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 3

Research article

|

26 Sep 2017

Research article |

| 26 Sep 2017

Climatology of Lyapunov exponents: the link between atmospheric rivers and large-scale mixing variability

Daniel Garaboa-Paz, Jorge Eiras-Barca, and Vicente Pérez-Muñuzuri

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-865-2017-supplement

Data sets

The ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system (http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim-full-daily/levtype=pl/) D. P. Dee et al. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.828

MEI Index, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) K. Wolter https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/index.html

An extension of the Tahiti-Darwin southern oscillation index (http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/soi) C. F. Ropelewski and P. D. Jones https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(1987)115<2161:AEOTTS>2.0.CO;2

Detection of atmospheric rivers: evaluation and application of an algorithm for global studies (https://ucla.app.box.com/v/ARcatalog/folder/16460297135) B. Guan and D. E. Waliser https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JD024257

Development of a 50-year high-resolution global dataset of meteorological forcings for land surface modeling (http://hydrology.princeton.edu/data/pgf/0.25deg/daily/) J. Sheffield, G. Goteti, and E. F. Wood https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI3790.1

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Short summary

For the first time, a climatology of Lyapunov exponents (FTLE) for the period 1979–2014 has been established. This climatology is able to reproduce the main large-scale structures observed in the troposphere. The mean FTLE has been shown to correlate with the baroclinic Eady growth rate within timescales of a few days. As a case study, the contribution of atmospheric rivers to this climatology and their contribution to rainfalls over the Sahara and UK regions have been studied.