The goal was finding a scaling law, a mathematical formula that described the size of a blocking event using variables that climate scientists already study and understand. Rice University fluid dynamicists have found a mathematical formula called a scaling law that relates the size of atmospheric blocking events to the width, latitude and strength of the jet stream, all of which are well-studied and measured. Using a hierarchical modeling approach, he began with experiments on a model of atmospheric turbulence that's far simpler than the real atmosphere. Nabizadeh, a mechanical engineering graduate student in Rice's Brown School of Engineering, set out to answer the question two years ago. For example, if the high-pressure system becomes bigger, you are going to get bigger heat waves that affect more people, and you are likely going to get stronger heat waves." And the size is very important because the blocking events are more impactful when they are larger. "The question nobody had asked is whether the size of these events will change or not. "Studies in the past have looked at whether you get more or less blocking events with climate change," he said. He said researchers have increasingly been interested in learning how climate change might affect blocking events, but most studies have focused on whether blocking events will become more frequent as the atmosphere warms because of greenhouse gas emissions. Hassanzadeh, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences, uses computational, mathematical and statistical models to study atmospheric flows related to a broad range of problems from extreme weather events to wind energy. The study, which is available online from Geophysical Research Letters, was co-authored by Da Yang of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Davis, and Elizabeth Barnes of Colorado State University. Using data from two sets of comprehensive climate model simulations, Rice fluid dynamicists Ebrahim Nabizadeh and Pedram Hassanzadeh, and colleagues found that the area of blocking events in the northern hemisphere will increase by as much as 17% due to anthropogenic climate change. Blocking events caused deadly heat waves in France in 2003 and in Russia in 2010. Depending upon when and where they develop, blocking events can cause droughts or downpours and heat waves or cold spells. Atmospheric blocking events are middle-latitude, high-pressure systems that stay in place for days or even weeks.
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