Xiaolan L. Wang, Val R. Swail, Francis W. Zwiers, Xuebin Zhang, Yang Feng

Climate Dynamics

Published date July 16, 2008

Detection of external influence on trends of atmospheric storminess and northern oceans wave heights

  • States that the atmospheric storminess as inferred from geostrophic wind energy and ocean wave heights have increased in boreal winter over the past half century in the high-latitudes of the northern hemisphere (especially the northeast North Atlantic), and have decreased in more southerly northern latitudes
  • This study shows that these trend patterns contain a detectable response to anthropogenic and natural forcing combined
  • Finds that the effect of external influence is strongest in the winter hemisphere (in the northern hemisphere in January–March and in the southern hemisphere in July–September)
  • Finds, however, that the simulated response to anthropogenic and natural forcing combined is significantly weaker than the magnitude of the observed changes in these parameters