Atmospheric blocking often causes high-impact weather extremes such as heat waves, droughts, cold outbreaks, and floods in the mid-latitudes. However, the physical and dynamical processes involved in blocking and how blocking and associated extremes may respond to climate change are not yet fully understood. This reduces our confidence in prediction on subseasonal to decadal timescales and in projection for the coming century, hindering informed decisions and policy making in relation to climate mitigation and adaptation. Blocking, a complex phenomenon with a range of different processes involved, strongly interacts with other components of the climate system. This is an emergent subject as climate change may affect the frequency, duration, and geographic distribution of blocking and associated extreme weather events.
Objectives
This workshop aims to advance our process-level understanding and diagnosis of the connections between atmospheric blocking and extreme weather in a changing climate, and the connections and feedback of climate variability to blocking and extreme weather. To achieve this goal, the workshop will:
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Assemble diverse scientists across various research communities, enabling dialogue and exchange of ideas;
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Synthesize the current understanding of blocking and extreme weather in a changing climate, including their representation in climate and weather models; and
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Identify the most important knowledge gaps and modeling challenges, propose ways to move science forward, and enable new collaborations.
Outcomes
Deliverables include:
- Recommendations for necessary observations, diagnostic and modeling activities, and theoretical frameworks that advance process-level understanding of blocking mechanisms and the connections between atmospheric blocking and other components of the climate system
- Action plan that identifies strategies to improve model representation of the connections between blocking and weather extremes in climate models
- Community building across the weather and climate research communities
- Identification of agreeable definitions, protocols, methodologies, and datasets to build consensus and further develop a Blocking Extreme Model Intercomparison Project (BEMIP)
