Subtropical Jet Control over Winter Storm Tracks: Sub-seasonal/seasonal variability

Overview

This talks demonstrated how different balances of processes acting on windstorms need to be considered, depending on their timescales. For example, bi-weekly to monthly fluctuations in storm intensity can be approximately viewed as a result of the competing forces of north-south temperature contrast increasing storm growth rate and the storms’ mixing effect that decreases the temperature contrast and thus their own growth rate. However, on seasonal timescales, fluctuations in eddy growth are substantially modified by the seasonal large-scale circulation changes. We use an aquaplanet model to show those changes.