30-03-2010: Mid-latitude storms and their evolution

Century-long simulations with global circulation models are used to obtain projections for changes in climate, including the effects of stormtracks, but large uncertainties remain. The physical mechanisms behind changes in storm frequency and intensity are not sufficiently well understood from a theoretical perspective to determine whether the results of the simulations are physically reasonable. In a paper that has just been accepted for publication in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, H. de Vries et al. 2010 contribute to this problem. They developed a novel theoretical framework to describe the evolution of mid-latitude storms in terms of only a few (Rossby wave) components and their interaction with the background state flow.