An ERA5 climatology of synoptic-scale negative potential vorticity–jet interactions over the western North Atlantic

Lojko, Alexander; Winters, Andrew C.; Oertel, Annika; Jablonowski, Christiane; Payne, Ashley E.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-387-2025

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-387-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-387-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

Research article

|

11 Apr 2025

Research article |

| 11 Apr 2025

An ERA5 climatology of synoptic-scale negative potential vorticity–jet interactions over the western North Atlantic

Alexander Lojko, Andrew C. Winters, Annika Oertel, Christiane Jablonowski, and Ashley E. Payne

Data sets

ERA5 hourly data on pressure levels from 1940 to present Hans Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.bd0915c6

Model code and software

evans36/miscellany Clark Evans https://github.com/evans36/miscellany/blob/main/VorticityandDivergenceInversion.ipynb

era5cli Ronald Haren et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14844544

AlexLojko/NPV_Algorithm Alexander Lojko https://github.com/AlexLojko/NPV_Algorithm/blob/main/NPV_jet_ID_algorithm_AL.ipynb

Short summary

Convective storms can produce intense anticyclonically rotating vortices (~10 km) defined by negative potential vorticity (NPV), which can elongate to larger scales (~1000 km). Our composite analysis shows that elongated NPV frequently occurs along the western North Atlantic tropopause, where we observed it enhancing jet stream kinematics. Elongated NPV may impinge on aviation turbulence and weather forecasting despite its small-scale origin.