Hurricane Eunice: Waves crash over Newhaven lighthouse and harbor wall in Newhaven, UK
The UK Met Office has issued two multi-month red weather warnings for strong winds. These are the highest threat levels meteorologists can issue and the first wind-only red warnings issued since Hurricane Gertrude in 2016.
So what’s behind the UK’s recent series of dangerous wind storms? And are these events likely to become more common in the future? Storm Arwen in late November 2021 caused havoc across Scotland, northern England and parts of Wales. Strong 100 mph winds have killed 3 people, toppled trees and left 9,000 without power for more than a week in freezing temperatures.
The devastation caused by Arwen is still evident in some areas and the cleanup of Cyclone Dudley – which hit eastern England on Wednesday 16 February – was underway at the time of writing.
Now, the UK faces Cyclone Eunice, with gusts of up to 122 mph. Eunice bears a striking resemblance to the “Great Storm” of 1987, which unleashed stormy winds and claimed the lives of 22 people across England and France that October.
Both are predicted to contain a “jet”: a small, narrow stream of air that can form inside a storm and generate strong winds over an area less than 100 km.
Britain put the military on standby on Friday and schools closed as Typhoon Eunice approached
The Sting Jet, which was first spotted in 2003, and likely appeared during Great Storms and Hurricane Arwen, can last anywhere between 1 and 12 hours. They are difficult to predict and relatively rare, but make hurricanes more dangerous.
The nozzles occur during a certain type of extratropical cyclone – a rotating wind system that forms outside the tropics.
These plumes form about 5km above Earth’s surface, then descend southwest of a cyclone, near its center, accelerating as they move and carrying fast-moving air from above in the atmosphere. atmosphere with them.
As they form, they can generate ground wind speeds much higher than what can be predicted by just studying the pressure gradient in the storm’s core.
Meteorologists are still working to understand the jet sparks, but they could have a significant effect on UK weather as the climate warms.
Wind damaged sections of the roof of the O2 Arena, formerly the Millennium Dome, photographed in London
In 1987, the models used to forecast the weather were not likely to be representative of the jet, but improvements meant that forecasters were predicting Hurricane Eunice before it started to form. in the Atlantic Ocean.
Over the past decade, our team at the University of Newcastle has worked closely with colleagues at the UK Met Office to develop new high-resolution climate models that can simulate sparks. , as well as hail and lightning, to shed light on how extreme weather events can change climate warming.
We already know that, as the world warms, downpours are increasing. The simple reason is that warmer air can hold more moisture. The UK saw the wettest day on record in 2020, estimated to be 2.5 times more likely due to greenhouse gas emissions.
Our research team’s new high-resolution climate models predict a larger increase in winter precipitation than standard global climate models due to much increased rainfall during winter thunderstorms. .
We’re not sure how the pattern of extreme wind storms, like Eunice, will change, because the processes involved are much more complex.
The UK’s recent cluster of winter monsoons was associated with a particularly strong polar vortex creating low Arctic pressure and a faster jet stream – the core of very strong winds in the atmosphere that can pull across the Atlantic – bringing larger storms and very wet weather to the UK.
A stronger jet stream makes hurricanes stronger, and its direction roughly determines the hurricane’s path and where it affects.
Certain aspects of climate change underpin the jet stream, leading to more windstorms in the UK. Other aspects, such as a higher rate of warming at the poles relative to the equator, could weaken it and the westerly headwind towards the UK.
Our high-resolution models predict more intense wind storms across the UK as climate change increases, with much of this increase coming from storms developing planes Jet.
Projections from global climate models are uncertain and show only a small increase in the number of extreme cyclones. But these models are not representative of the jets and poorly simulate the processes that cause storms. As a result, these models may underestimate changes in future hurricane intensity.
We think that using high-resolution climate models, which can represent important processes such as jet lag, together with information from global models about how the conditions Large scale may vary, possibly giving a more accurate picture. But the UK is not doing enough to prepare for the increasingly severe weather that has been forecast.
Humanity has the right to choose how much the world warms based on how quickly we reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
While more research will confirm whether more extreme wind storms will make landfall in the UK in the future, we are certain that winter storms will produce torrential downpours. and more rain and floods when they happen.
