TY - JOUR
T1 - The role of the export of tropical moisture into midlatitudes for extreme precipitation events in the Mediterranean region
AU - Krichak, Simon O.
AU - Barkan, Joseph
AU - Breitgand, Joseph S.
AU - Gualdi, Silvio
AU - Feldstein, Steven B.
N1 - Funding Information:
The financial support for this work has been provided by The United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) under research grant no. 2008436, the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) under grants AGS-1036858 and AGS-1401220, Research Grant 4500568707 for 2011–2013 by the Israeli Water Authority of the Ministry of Infrastructures, and the European Union Sixth Framework programme project Climate Change and Impact Research: Mediterranean Environment (CIRCE) [ www.circeproject.eu ] under contract GOCE-036961. This work is also a contribution to the Hydrological Cycle in Mediterranean Experiment (HyMex) and The Northern Eurasian Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI). One of the authors (SG) thanks the projects GEMINA and NextData funded by the Italian Ministries of University and Research (MIUR) and of Environment (MATT). Discussions supported through the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Earth System Science and Environmental Management (ESSEM) Action ES0905 “Basic concepts for convection parameterization in weather forecast and climate models” and the WMO MEDEX and European Science Foundation MedClivar programs are also acknowledged. Additionally, the authors gratefully acknowledge the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) for the provision of the HYSPLIT transport and dispersion model and/or READY website ( http://www.ready.noaa.gov ) used in this publication. Finally, we acknowledge the use of the NCEP Reanalysis data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA from their website at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/ ; of the data from the 20th Century Reanalysis from the website http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/20thC_Rean/ ; as well as the use of the maps of indices of precipitation extremes and their multiyear trends during the twentieth century over the European region available at the website ( http://eca.knmi.nl/ ) of the European Climate Assessment & Dataset project (ECA). The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, Springer-Verlag Wien.
PY - 2015/8/6
Y1 - 2015/8/6
N2 - The aims of the study are twofold: firstly, to investigate the role of the export of humid tropical air in the formation of cool season heavy precipitating events (HPEs) in the Mediterranean region (MR); and secondly, to examine the possible linkage between the export of humid tropical air and the multiyear trend in extreme precipitation in the region. For this purpose, we analyze the spatial distributions of a number of key atmospheric variables with a reanalysis data for more than 50 intense HPEs for the MR. The results of this evaluation for both individual and composite events suggest that the HPEs are associated with atmospheric rivers (ARs). The MR HPEs are being characterized by the poleward export of humid air of tropical origin into the midlatitude MR from the Atlantic Ocean and Arabian Sea. These export events appear to be associated with the effects of hurricanes or intense cyclones in the North Atlantic. It was also found that the linear trend (for 1979–2013) of the frequency of humid days (days with precipitable water greater than 20 kg m−2) is consistent with recent changes in the character of precipitation over the MR and southern Europe.
AB - The aims of the study are twofold: firstly, to investigate the role of the export of humid tropical air in the formation of cool season heavy precipitating events (HPEs) in the Mediterranean region (MR); and secondly, to examine the possible linkage between the export of humid tropical air and the multiyear trend in extreme precipitation in the region. For this purpose, we analyze the spatial distributions of a number of key atmospheric variables with a reanalysis data for more than 50 intense HPEs for the MR. The results of this evaluation for both individual and composite events suggest that the HPEs are associated with atmospheric rivers (ARs). The MR HPEs are being characterized by the poleward export of humid air of tropical origin into the midlatitude MR from the Atlantic Ocean and Arabian Sea. These export events appear to be associated with the effects of hurricanes or intense cyclones in the North Atlantic. It was also found that the linear trend (for 1979–2013) of the frequency of humid days (days with precipitable water greater than 20 kg m−2) is consistent with recent changes in the character of precipitation over the MR and southern Europe.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84938743128
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84938743128#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.1007/s00704-014-1244-6
DO - 10.1007/s00704-014-1244-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84938743128
SN - 0177-798X
VL - 121
SP - 499
EP - 515
JO - Theoretical and Applied Climatology
JF - Theoretical and Applied Climatology
IS - 3-4
ER -