Climatea Journal Club

Speaker: Lei Wang

Lei is going to lead a discussion on: "Probability of US heat waves affected by a subseasonal planetary wave pattern” by Teng et al 2013. Here is the abstract of his talk:

"To tease out the causality and physical mechanisms of extreme weather events is a fundamental challenge in our field. In U.S., heat waves are the product of the atmospheric intra-seasonal variability. In terms of the source of its predictability, while tropical forcing (by moist convection) can lead to large-amplitude wave events in the mid-latitudes, the work by Teng et al identifies a global-scale wavenumber-five pattern that is intrinsic to the mid-latitude dynamics. This distinctive pattern can foreshadow the emergence of extreme heat events in US more than two weeks in advance. Teng et al reach this conclusion base on a careful analysis of a long AGCM integration (12000-year). In this ClimaTea, I would like to foster a discussion of the fundamental dynamics of such wave number five pattern from a theoretical perspective.”