Matthews et al ERL 2018 - Super Storm Desmon - a process-based assessment.pdf (4.51 MB)
Super Storm Desmond: a process-based assessment
journal contribution
posted on 2018-02-05, 11:44 authored by Tom Matthews, Conor Murphy, Gerard McCarthy, Ciaran Broderick, Robert WilbyRobert Wilby‘Super’ Storm Desmond broke meteorological and hydrological records during a record warm year in the British–Irish Isles (BI). The severity of the storm may be a harbinger of expected changes to regional hydroclimate as global temperatures continue to rise. Here, we adopt a process-based approach to investigate the potency of Desmond, and explore the extent to which climate change may have been a contributory factor. Through an Eulerian assessment of water vapour flux we determine that Desmond was accompanied by an atmospheric river (AR) of severity unprecedented since at least 1979, on account of both high atmospheric humidity and high wind speeds. Lagrangian air-parcel tracking and moisture attribution techniques show that long-term warming of North Atlantic sea surface temperatures has significantly increased the chance of such high humidity in ARs in the vicinity of the BI. We conclude that, given exactly the same dynamical conditions associated with Desmond, the likelihood of such an intense AR has already increased by 25% due to long-term climate change. However, our analysis represents a first-order assessment, and further research is needed into the controls influencing AR dynamics.
Funding
Conor Murphy was funded by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency under project 2014 CCRP-MS.16.
History
Department
- Geography and Environment
Published in
Environmental Research LettersVolume
13Issue
1Citation
MATTHEWS, T.K.R. ... et al, 2018. Super Storm Desmond: a process-based assessment. Environmental Research Letters, 13 (1), 014024.Publisher
IOP Publishing Ltd © The AuthorsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Acceptance date
2017-11-07Publication date
2018-01-18Copyright date
2018Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by IOP Publishing Ltd under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/eISSN
1748-9326Publisher version
Language
- en