This study provides a novel Lagrangian perspective on cyclogenesis grounded in atmospheric energetics. While the energetics framework is commonly used to understand the planetary scale circulation, its application to synoptic scales is less explored. The authors establish a close connection between extratropical baroclinic zones and local available potential energy, and further analyze air parcel trajectories to link conversions between potential and kinetic energy to specific features of the developing cyclones. The results of this study offer insights into the local, synoptic and large scale contributions to cyclogenesis that are relevant for diverse disciplines in atmospheric and climate sciences.

How precipitation over ocean regions changes with global warming is grounded in a well accepted theory, but there is so far no such theory to describe precipitation changes over land. This paper provides important theoretical, numerical and observational evidence for the sensitivity of orographically-induced precipitation in the tropics to background wind changes. The result that tropical orographic rainfall increases with cross-slope winds at a rate of 20-30% (which is more than twice the rate expected from simple "upslope flow” theory) has important implications for constraining future climate change, providing an avenue for reliable projections of continental precipitation without the need for climate models that explicitly resolve convection.

The occurrence and predictability of extreme events is often modulated by regional dynamical drivers, but their identification is not straightforward. This paper by Fiona Spuler et al. presents an innovate approach to dimensionality reduction targeted on regionally occurring phenomena. Their approach is based on a machine-learning method demonstrating, in a broad sense, that these method can identify physically interpretable drivers of targeted phenomena. The authors discuss the tradeoff between regime informativeness of local precipitation extremes and predictability of the regimes at subseasonal lead times. The novel machine-learning-based approach may find useful application beyond atmospheric and climate science.

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.