Understanding and attributing the Euro-Russian summer blocking signatures

Abstract

In this work, we focus on summer blocking events over the Euro-Russian region related with heat waves. An analysis of the main characteristics of summer Euro-Russian blocking events in global Reanalysis as well as in the 20th century CLIVAR atmospheric simulations is carried out to assess whether anthropogenic forcing might have affected the blocking events occurrence and the associated heat waves strength in recent decades. Over the Euro-Russian region, blocking episodes, associated to warm events over Northern and Central Europe, become significantly longer in the second half of the century when the anthropogenic forcing is included in the simulations. © 2014 Royal Meteorological Society.