Structural uncertainty in mapping Euro-Atlantic atmospheric rivers obscures understanding of associated meteorological extremes

Abstract

Abstract Understanding uncertainties in meteorological extremes induced by Atmospheric river (AR) structural uncertainties can help to develop effective strategies to mitigate AR induced hazards and adapt to changing climate conditions. As a first step, this study examines the statistical relationship between AR structural uncertainty and the characterisation of associated meteorological extremes over the Euro-Atlantic region, using long-term historical data from ECMWF Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) during 1940 to 2022. Leveraging the Bayesian AR detection (BARD), a form of statistical machine learning model in the Toolkit for Extreme Climate Analysis (TECA), we examine the impact of structural uncertainties in AR dimensions on daily precipitation (wet), wind speeds (windy), and temperature (warm/cold) anomalies and extremes over Europe, the UK and Scandinavia. A large spread in the aggregated detected AR probabilities (ARP) spatially and temporally led to differences in ARs’ attributes, such as frequency, integrated water vapour transport (IVT; intensity), and their impact on weather parameters, anomalies and extremes at selected probability thresholds across space and time. The magnitude of AR impacts and associated meteorological phenomena over land varies based on the chosen deciles (dividing ARP into ten equal parts with a 0.1 increase) of ARPs, along with the default threshold from the model ( $$ARP \ge 0.67$$ ). AR intensities and landfalling area are increasing over the study period, irrespective of the selected ARP. The effects of AR structural uncertainties are more prominent over inland Europe and Scandinavia than over coastal Europe and the UK. The physical and meteorological phenomena underlying these results require further exploration to understand the impact of landfalling ARs on land.