Recommended citation: Fernández-Alvarez, J.C., Pérez-Alarcón, A., Eiras-Barca, J., Nieto, R., Gimeno, L. (2024). Projections of moisture sources under climate change for the atmospheric rivers that reach the Iberian Peninsula. XXXVI Jornadas Científicas de la Asociación Meteorológica Española . Cadiz, Spain, 13-15 March 2024. [PDF]

Abstract

Atmospheric Rivers (AR) are known as narrow and long (> 2000 km) corridors of water vapor. These represent more than 90% of the meridional transport of moisture and latent heat associated with storm tracks in the extratropics. In the context of climate change, the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere is projected to increase by approximately 7% K-1 in the lower troposphere which results in future changes in moisture sources contributing to moisture transported by ARs to higher latitudes toward the end of the 21st century. Simulations of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF-ARW) model forced with the Community Earth System Model (CESM2) and the FLEXPART-WRF model forced with the WRF-ARW outputs are used to determine these changes. The analysis was carried out mainly by determining the moisture uptake anomaly for the mid-century (MC, 2049- 2053) and end-of-century (EC, 2096-2100) periods, considering the annual and seasonal changes of the variable.