How large are projected 21st century storm track changes?

Harvey, B. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6510-8181, Shaffrey, L. C., Woollings, T. J., Zappa, G. and Hodges, K. I. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0894-229X (2012) How large are projected 21st century storm track changes? Geophysical Research Letters, 39 (18). L18707. ISSN 1944-8007 doi: 10.1029/2012GL052873

Abstract/Summary

Projected changes in the extra-tropical wintertime storm tracks are investigated using the multi-model ensembles from both the third and fifth phases of the World Climate Research Programme's Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3 and CMIP5). The aim is to characterize the magnitude of the storm track responses relative to their present-day year-to-year variability. For the experiments considered, the ‘middle-of-the-road’ scenarios in each CMIP, there are regions of the Northern Hemisphere where the responses of up to 40% of the models exceed half of the inter-annual variability, and for the Southern Hemisphere there are regions where up to 60% of the model responses exceed half of the inter-annual variability.