Ocean and atmosphere influence on the 2015 European heatwave

During the summer of 2015, central Europe experienced a major heatwave that was preceded by anomalously cold sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the northern North Atlantic. Recent observation-based studies found a correlation between North Atlantic SST in spring and European summer temperatures, sug...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental research letters 2019-11, Vol.14 (11), p.114035
Main Authors: Mecking, J V, Drijfhout, S S, Hirschi, J J-M, Blaker, A T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
2015 cold blob
2015 heatwave
Air temperature
Anomalies
Atmosphere
Climate models
Climatology
European summer
Initial conditions
Matching
North Atlantic SST
Ocean temperature
Sea ice
Sea surface temperature
seasonal predictions
Summer
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:During the summer of 2015, central Europe experienced a major heatwave that was preceded by anomalously cold sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the northern North Atlantic. Recent observation-based studies found a correlation between North Atlantic SST in spring and European summer temperatures, suggesting potential for predictability. Here we show, by using a high-resolution climate model, that ocean temperature anomalies, in combination with matching atmospheric and sea-ice initial conditions were key to the development of the 2015 European heatwave. In a series of 30-member ensemble simulations we test different combinations of ocean temperature and salinity initial states versus non-initialised climatology, mediated in both ensembles by different atmospheric/sea-ice initial conditions, using a non-standard initialisation method without data-assimilation. With the best combination of the initial ocean, and matching atmosphere/sea-ice initial conditions, the ensemble mean temperature response over central Europe in this set-up equals 60% of the observed anomaly, with 6 out of 30 ensemble-members showing similar, or even larger surface air temperature anomalies than observed.
ISSN:1748-9326
1748-9326
DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/ab4d33