Investigation of the vertical structure of the lower atmosphere during heat wave conditions
<p>The research on heat waves is strongly motivated by their impacts on human<br />life and the economy. Consequently, less research has been done on the<br />state of the lower atmosphere as a whole during these extreme events,<br />although it may play a role in the formation and persistence of heat<br />waves. Miralles et al. (2014) show that different factors must come<br />together to produce extremes such as the pronounced heat waves<br />in the year 2003 in France and 2010 in Russia. One interesting phenomenon<br />in this context is the emergence of an unusually deep boundary layer. The aim<br />of this work is to analyse whether this feature is a common trait of European<br />heat waves in general. To this end, we systematically investigate the vertical<br />structure and evolution of the lower atmosphere during heat waves in the<br />time period from 2014 to 2018. COSMO-REA6 data is used to find heatwaves<br />and provides vertical profiles of the atmosphere which we also compare<br />to radio sonde measurements. The results of our work could possibly be<br />used to improve the discriminability of different severity levels of heat waves or to<br />formulate a heat wave measure that is not based solely on surface variables.</p>