Weather regimes: recurrence and quasi stationarity

Abstract

Two different definitions of midlatitude weather regimes are compared. The first seeks recurrent atmospheric patterns. The second seeks quasi-stationary patterns, whose average tendency vanishes. Recurrent patterns are identified by cluster analysis, and qausi-stationary patterns are identified by solving a nonlinear equilibration equation. The two methods give the same number of weather regimes - four over the Atlantic sector and three over the Pacific sector. However, the patterns differ significantly. The investigation of the tendency, or drift, of the clusters shows that recurrent flows have a systematic slow evolution, explaining this difference. The patterns are in agreement with the ones obtained from previous studies, but their number differs. -from Authors