Stratospheric influence on North Atlantic marine cold air outbreaks following sudden stratospheric warming events

Abstract

Marine cold air outbreaks (MCAOs) in the northeastern North Atlantic occur due to the advection of extremely cold air over an ice-free ocean. MCAOs are associated with a range of severe weather phenomena, such as polar lows, strong surface winds and intense cooling of the ocean surface. Given these extreme impacts, the identification of precursors of MCAOs is crucial for improved long-range prediction of associated impacts on Arctic infrastructure and human lives. MCAO frequency has been linked to the strength of the stratospheric polar vortex, but the study of connections to the occurrence of extreme stratospheric events, known as sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs), has been limited to cold extremes over land. Here, the influence of SSW events on MCAOs over the North Atlantic ocean is studied using reanalysis datasets. Overall, SSW events are found to be associated with more frequent MCAOs in the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea compared to climatology and less frequent MCAOs in the Labrador Sea. In particular, SSW events project onto an anomalous dipole pattern of geopotential height 500 hPa, which consists of a ridge anomaly over Greenland and a trough anomaly over Scandinavia. By affecting the variability of the large-scale circulation patterns in the North Atlantic, SSW events contribute to the strong northerly flow over the Barents and Norwegian seas and thereby increase the likelihood of MCAOs in these regions. In contrast, the positive geopotential height anomaly over Greenland reduces the probability of MCAOs in the Labrador Sea after SSW events. As SSW events tend to have a long-term influence on surface weather, these results are expected to benefit the predictability of MCAOs in the Nordic Seas for winters with SSW events.