Temporally and zonally varying atmospheric waveguides – climatologies and connections to quasi-stationary waves

White, Rachel H.; Mareshet Admasu, Lualawi

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-549-2025

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-549-2025

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-549-2025

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

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

Research article

|

16 May 2025

Research article |

| 16 May 2025

Temporally and zonally varying atmospheric waveguides – climatologies and connections to quasi-stationary waves

Rachel H. White and Lualawi Mareshet Admasu

Data sets

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

Data for: Time and Zonally-varying Atmospheric Waveguides - Climatologies and Connections to Quasi-Stationary Waves Rachel H. White https://doi.org/10.20383/103.01206

Model code and software

rhwhite/Waveguide_code: Ks_waveguide_code Rachel H. White https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15226476

Short summary

Mid-latitude atmospheric jet streams sometimes create "waveguides", which are thought to increase the chance of quasi-stationary waves – atmospheric circulation patterns that can lead to extreme weather events. We compare two methods of identifying atmospheric waveguides, finding that one method seems to be less impacted by the presence of waves and provides much stronger correlations with enhanced quasi-stationary waves, and recommend this method for future studies.