Spatio-temporal averaging of jets obscures the  reinforcement of baroclinicity by latent heating

Auestad, Henrik; Spensberger, Clemens; Marcheggiani, Andrea; Ceppi, Paulo; Spengler, Thomas; Woollings, Tim

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-5-1269-2024

Articles | Volume 5, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-5-1269-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-5-1269-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 5, issue 4

Research article

|

14 Oct 2024

Research article |

| 14 Oct 2024

Spatio-temporal averaging of jets obscures the reinforcement of baroclinicity by latent heating

Henrik Auestad, Clemens Spensberger, Andrea Marcheggiani, Paulo Ceppi, Thomas Spengler, and Tim Woollings

Data sets

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present Copernicus Climate Change Service, Climate Data Store https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

ERA5 jet axes 1979-2022 [Data set] Clemens Spensberger https://doi.org/10.11582/2023.00120

ERA5 jet cross sections [Data set] Clemens Spensberger https://doi.org/10.11582/2023.00121

Model code and software

Dynlib: A Library of Diagnostics, Feature Detection Algorithms, Plotting and Convenience Functions for Dynamic Meteorology Clemens Spensberger https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10471187

Short summary

Latent heating due to condensation can influence atmospheric circulation by strengthening or weakening horizontal temperature contrasts. Strong temperature contrasts intensify storms and imply the existence of strong upper tropospheric winds called jets. It remains unclear whether latent heating preferentially reinforces or abates the existing jet. We show that this disagreement is attributable to how the jet is defined, confirming that latent heating reinforces the jet.