[1] The link between high latitude Atlantic winter cyclone activity and both the climate of Spitsbergen and Fram Strait ice export is examined. Cyclones are more frequent over Fram Strait in relatively mild, low ice export, winters and are associated with south-southwesterly flow around anomalous high pressure over Scandinavia. There is an increased tendency for cyclogenesis to occur off the no...

Surface cyclone tracks are investigated in the context of moist potential vorticity (MPV). A prognostic equation of surface absolute vorticity is derived which provides a basis for using negative MPV (NMPV) in the troposphere as an alternative approach to track surface cyclones. An observed case study of explosive lee cyclogenesis is performed to test the effectiveness of the MPV approach. It i...

Extratropical cyclones are the primary natural hazard affecting western Europe. They are associated with strong winds and rainfall (Lamb, 1991) which can result in significant societal impacts. For example, windstorms Anatol, Lothar and Martin in 1999 resulted in approximately €16 billion of total insured losses (Swiss Re, 2016). Cyclones contribute to more than 70% of the precipitation that fa...

A novel method is introduced to generate climatological frequency distributions of meteorological features from gridded datasets. The method is used here to derive a climatology of extratropical cyclones from sea level pressure (SLP) fields. A simple and classical conception of cyclones is adopted where a cyclone is identified as the finite area that surrounds a local SLP minimum and is enclose...

Abstract Equatorward excursions of cold polar air masses into ice-free regions, so-called Cold Air Outbreaks (CAO), are frequently accompanied by the development severe mesoscale weather features. Focusing on two key Labrador Sea and Greenland/Norwegian Sea, we apply objective detection for both CAO events cyclones to outline temporal evolution quantify associated cyclogenesis. We introduce a n...

In satellite images the ITCZ (intertropical convergence zone) is sometimes observed to undulate and break down into a series of tropical disturbances. Tropical cyclones may later develop within these disturbances and move into higher latitudes allowing the ITCZ to reform. It has been proposed that ITCZ breakdown results from a convectively modified form of combined barotropic and baroclinic ins...

Unprecedented warming in the Arctic has led to a dramatic reduction in both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice (Stroeve et al. 2011), opening up opportunities for business in diverse sectors such as fossil fuel and mineral extraction, shipping and tourism (Jung et al. 2016). Industrial activities in the Arctic are expected to be subject to high levels of investment over the coming decad...