Statistical Characteristics and Composite Environmental Conditions of Explosive Cyclones over the Japan Sea and Kuroshio/Kuroshio Extension

Statistical characteristics and composite synoptic-scale environmental conditions of explosive cyclones (ECs) over the Japan Sea and Kuroshio/Kuroshio Extension are examined and compared using ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis to give a better understanding of their differences. ECs over the Japan Sea frequently occur in late autumn and early winter and those over the Kuroshio/Kuroshio Extension mainly occur in winter and early spring. The maximum deepening rate, minimum central sea level pressure and explosive-developing lifetime of ECs over the Kuroshio/Kuroshio Extension are generally larger, lower and longer, respectively, than those over the Japan Sea. ECs over the Kuroshio/Kuroshio Extension formed over the East China Sea tend to develop more rapidly, and weak and moderate ECs generally begin to develop explosively over the sea to the east of the Japan Islands, while the strong and super ECs over the sea to the south of Japan Islands have longer explosive-developing tracks. Composite analysis shows that synoptic-scale environmental conditions favoring rapid EC development over these two regions are significantly different. ECs over the Japan Sea have stronger baroclinicity and cyclonic vorticity, but weaker water vapor convergence and upper-level jet stream than those over the Kuroshio/Kuroshio Extension. The key factor contributing to the baroclinicity is the cold air intrusion over the Japan Sea and the strong warm current heating over the Kuroshio/Kuroshio Extension. The potential vorticity shows anomalies in upper and low levels for both EC areas and extends further downwards over the Japan Sea.

A Comparison of Initial Developments Between Explosive and Ordinary Mid-latitude Cyclones Off the East Asian Coast in Winter

Explosive cyclones (ECs) off the East Asian coast post challenges in forecasting and significant threats to human life and property. In searching for the key features that distinguish explosive cyclones (ECs) from ordinary extratropical cyclones (OCs), this study presents detailed comparison of winter ECs versus OCs in the perspective of potential vorticity (PV) using 10 years of reanalysis data with high temporal and spatial resolutions. ECs feature greater low-level baroclinity and stronger PV than OCs. The decomposition of local PV tendency shows the important contribution of cold advection (with correlation coefficient of 0.8) in the initial development of ECs. A stronger cold advection for ECs increases upstream static stability, leading to intrusion of higher PV along the steeper isentropic surfaces. The importance of cold advection is further proved by numerical experiments with the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model on a typical winter EC. The weakening of cold advection within low-troposphere in sensitivity experiment can significantly decrease PV and stop the cyclone from explosive deepening. In addition to the consensus that diabatic processes play important roles in the intensification of explosive cyclogenesis, this study emphasizes the importance of horizontal cold advection (which is also associated with baroclinic instability) in the preconditioning PV for explosive cyclogenesis.

Development Processes of the Explosive Cyclones over the Northwest Pacific: Potential Vorticity Tendency Inversion

A novel method that quantitatively evaluates the development processes of extratropical cyclones is devised and applied to the explosive cyclones over the Northwest Pacific in the cold season (October–April). By inverting the potential vorticity (PV) tendency equation, the contribution of dynamic and thermodynamic processes at different levels to explosive cyclone development is quantified. In terms of geostrophic vorticity tendency at 850 hPa, which is utilized to quantify cyclone development, the leading factors for the explosive cyclone intensification are upper-level PV advection by the mean zonal flow and the PV production from latent heating. However, explosive cyclones are also subject to hindrances from vertical and meridional PV advections. Quantitatively, the sum of thermodynamic contributions by the latent heating, vertical PV advection, and surface temperature tendency is about 1.6 times more important than the dynamical PV redistribution by horizontal advections on the explosive cyclone intensification. This result confirms the dominant role of thermodynamic processes in explosive cyclone development over the Northwest Pacific. It turns out from further analysis that the interactions of lower-level anomalous flows are important for thermodynamic processes, whereas the advections by the upper-level mean flow are primary for dynamic processes.

Explosive Cyclones in the CORDEX-CORE projections for Southern Hemisphere domains

<p>Explosive cyclones (ECs) are extratropical systems, often associated with extreme events,  which experience a fast deepening (~24 hPa/24 h) over a relatively short time range. Here, we analyze changes in the austral winter characteristics of ECs in three domains (Africa-AFR, Australia-AUS and South America-SAM) as projected by Regional Climate Model (RegCM4) under RCP8.5 emission scenario in the CORDEX-CORE framework. RegCM4 was nested in three global climate models (GCMs) from CMIP5 (HadGEM2-ES, MPI-ESM-MR and NorESM-1M) and executed with 25 km of grid spacing. The cyclone database was obtained with the application of an automatic detection and tracking scheme to the 6-hourly mean sea level pressure fields. Extratropical cyclones with explosive features are then selected using the Sanders and Gyakum criterium. Following IPCC recommendation, we analyze the reference 1995–2014 period and the end-of-century 2080–2099 period. ECs represent ~13-17% of the total number of cyclones in ERA-Interim reanalysis during the austral winter, while the simulation ensembles, in general, underestimate this value. While in the AFR domain GCMs ensemble represents better the percentage of ECs compared to ERA-Interim, in AUS and SAM domains RegCM4 has a better performance than GCMs. The percentage of ECs compared to the  total number of cyclones in each domain is projected to increase, with higher positive trends for the SAM domain (7.4% in GCMs and 5.6% in RegCM4) than  AFR (3.3% in GCMs and 3.9% in RegCM4) and AUS (3.9% in GCMs and 1.7% in RegCM4). Compared to the present climate, ECs in the future will be stronger and faster but with a shorter lifetime.</p>

Climatological features of strong winds caused by extratropical cyclones around Japan

We examined the climatological features of strong winds associated with extratropical cyclones around Japan during 40 seasons between November-April from 1979/80 to 2018/19 using reanalysis data. Our assessments revealed that the extratropical cyclones caused most of the strong winds around Japan (80-90%). Notably, the contribution of explosively developing extratropical cyclones is larger (70-80%). The strong winds are mainly related to the warm conveyor belt (WCB) and cold conveyor belt (CCB) inside the explosive cyclones. Moreover, the strong winds tend to be distributed widely over the southwestern quadrant of the cyclones. This is due to the intensification of the horizontal pressure gradient between the mature cyclones and the Siberian high extending from the Eurasia continent to Japan. We investigated the regionality of strong winds by highlighting the three areas with high frequencies of strong winds: the area around Hokkaido (i.e., the northernmost island of Japan [area A]), and the areas around the Japan Sea side (area B) and the Pacific Ocean side (area C) of the main island of Japan. The features of the seasonal change in the frequency of the strong winds differ in each area, which reflects the seasonal change in the activities of the explosive cyclones. Moreover, the CCB, the head of the CCB and WCB, and the CCB and WCB bring the strong winds to areas A, B, and C, respectively. The timing of the appearance of these windstorms during the lifecycles of typical cases highlighted in this study is consistent with that observed in Europe.

PROBABILISTIC ANALYSIS OF WINTER STORM SURGES DEPENDING ON METEOROLOGICAL FEATURES OF EXPLOSIVE CYCLONES

In this study, we provide a probabilistic assessment of storm surges on the basis of meteorological features of past explosive cyclones classified in the three evolution types through computational experiments. Three-dimensional ocean current computations were performed to obtain local sea-level rise along the coasts of Japan and Eurasia for cyclones observed in the past two decades. The vulnerability of local coasts and disaster risks are discussed in relation to the calculated probability of sea-level rise due to potential storm surges.Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/D8jg4jwK858