Potential Vorticity Diagnostics to Quantify Effects of Latent Heating in Extratropical Cyclones: Methodology and Application to Idealized Climate Change Simulations

AbstractIt is still debated how enhanced cloud-condensational latent heating (LH) in a warmer and moister climate may affect the dynamics of extratropical cyclones. In this study, a diagnostic method that explicitly quantifies the contribution of LH to the lower-tropospheric cyclonic potential vorticity (PV) anomaly is used to investigate the effects of stronger LH on the dynamics, intensity, and impacts of cyclones in two conceptually different sets of idealized climate change simulations. A first set of regional surrogate climate change simulations of individual moderate to intense Northern Hemisphere cyclones in a spatially homogeneously 4K warmer climate reveals that enhanced LH can largely but not exclusively explain the substantially varying increase in intensity and impacts of most of these cyclones. A second set of idealized aquaplanet GCM simulations demonstrates that the role of enhanced LH becomes multifaceted for large ensembles of cyclones if climate warming is additionally accompanied by cha...