the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
A global climatology of sting-jet extratropical cyclones
Abstract. Sting jets have been identified in the most damaging extratropical cyclones impacting northwest Europe. Unlike the cold conveyor belt and other long-lived cyclone wind jets, sting jets can lead to regions of exceptionally strong near-surface winds, and damaging gusts, over just a few hours and with much smaller wind “footprints”. They descend into the frontal-fracture region found in warm-seclusion cyclones. Previous research has focused almost exclusively on North Atlantic-European cyclones, but there are no known physical reasons why sting jets should not develop elsewhere and recognition of their existence can inform weather nowcasting and wind warnings. We have produced the first climatology of sting-jet cyclones over the major ocean basins. A sting-jet precursor diagnostic has been applied to more than 10,000 warm-seclusion cyclones in the top intensity decile, tracked using 43 extended-winters of ERA5 reanalysis data. Cyclones with sting-jet precursors are found to occur over the North Pacific and Southern Oceans for the first time and they are more prevalent in the Northern Hemisphere (27 % of all top decile cyclones) compared to the Southern Hemisphere (15 %). These cyclones have distinct characteristics to those without the precursor including initiating closer to the equator, deepening faster in mean-sea-level pressure and having stronger near-surface winds, even in the reanalysis data which is too coarse to resolve sting jets. Composite analysis reveals systematic differences in structural evolution, including in potential vorticity and jet crossing. These differences evidence the climatological consequences of strong diabatic cloud processes on cyclone characteristics, implying that sting jets are likely to be enhanced by climate change.
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Status: open (until 01 Aug 2024)
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-1413', Emmanouil Flaounas, 08 Jul 2024
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Review of the paper "A global climatology of sting-jet extratropical cyclones" by Gray et al., 2024.
I read the paper with great interest and I found it helpful and insightful, providing a richness of interesting results. A global climatology of sting-jet cyclones was indeed missing from the state of the art and this paper provides an overview of these systems' structural characteristics and insights into their dynamics. I have comments and suggestions of minor nature on the organization of the manuscript that I leave to the authors discretion if they want to follow them.
Section 2 is clearly described, albeit complicated and long. Complexity is not due to language or presentation, but due to the large amount of knowledge and techniques that someone needs to understand and be already familiar with. Probably sections 2.1, 2.3 and 2.6 could go together. Then, sections 2.2 and 2.4 could form a separate (sub)section which could be supported with schematics or flowcharts so that the reader can conceptually understand the role of different dynamical features in sting-jets. A subsequent subsection could use real cases as examples (now figures 1 to 3) to demonstrate the complexity of the exercise and what is expected in realistic datasets. Finally, section 2.5 although it is important it could be moved to supplement or an appendix.
I am not sure there are many(any?) climatologies of warm seclusions (SJP+nSJP). It would be useful to know a bit more on how they compare spatially to other intense cyclones.
Section 3.1: If most SJP cyclones include a sting jet and if ERA5 may partly resolve these sting jets, then is it possible that sting jets are responsible for higher relative vorticity at 850 hPa in the center of the cyclones in T63 resolution? If so, then SJP cyclones should anyway be more intense than other cyclones (if we use relative vorticity as an intensity metric). A reply comes later in section 3.4, so I am wondering if this section should be merged with 3.4? (Please also see next comment on section 3.6).
Section 3.6: seems a bit weaker and detached from the rest of the paper and is only confirming that SJP cyclones inlcude higher wind speeds. I am wondering if there should be a unique subsection that discusses the intensity of the cyclones involved in this analysis (i.e. merging current sections 3.1, 3.4 and 3.6).
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1413-RC1
Model code and software
Code to calculate DSCAPE from vertical profiles Oscar Martínez-Alvarado https://github.com/omartineza/csisounding
The TRACK cyclone identification and tracking algorithm Kevin Hodges https://gitlab.act.reading.ac.uk/track/
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