Principal Investigator Paul O'Gorman
Global warming is expected to cause a poleward shift in extratropical storm tracks. The change in the intensities of extratropical storms is less clear, and likely depends on the season or hemisphere under consideration. The kinetic energy of transient eddies is found to scale with the dry available potential energy of the mean state in simulations with an idealized model of the atmosphere. Increased latent heating in warmer climates does not seem to alter this relation for reasons that remain unclear. O’Gorman and co-workers are attempting to further quantify the changes in the energy of extratropical storms from very cold to warm climates, and understand if abrupt changes in the behavior of storm tracks can occur.