Weather and Climate Dynamics
Weather and Climate Dynamics
WCD
Articles | Volume 6, issue 3
Articles | Volume 6, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-901-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-901-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 6, issue 3
Research article
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05 Sep 2025
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 05 Sep 2025

CYCLOPs: a Unified Framework for Surface Flux-Driven Cyclones Outside the Tropics

Kerry Emanuel, Tommaso Alberti, Stella Bourdin, Suzana J. Camargo, Davide Faranda, Emmanouil Flaounas, Juan Jesus Gonzalez-Aleman, Chia-Ying Lee, Mario Marcello Miglietta, Claudia Pasquero, Alice Portal, Hamish Ramsay, Marco Reale, and Romualdo Romero

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This study provides a unifying framework for extratropical low-pressure systems with tropical characteristics like nearly axisymmetric inner cores, eyes, and spiral bands. These characteristics can be found, e.g., in subtropical cyclones, polar lows, and medicanes. The authors propose to call these cyclones CYCLOPs, which refers to "cyclones from locally originating potential intensity". The paper presents several case studies to explain and illustrate the new concept, and therefore the paper is also of particular educational value.
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Short summary
Storms strongly resembling hurricanes are sometimes observed to form well outside the tropics, even in polar latitudes. They behave capriciously, developing very rapidly and then dying just as quickly. We show that strong dynamical processes in the atmosphere can sometimes cause it to become much colder locally than the underlying ocean, creating the conditions for hurricanes to form but only over small areas and for short times. We call the resulting storms "CYCLOPs".
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