Kyle M. Nardi

Pennsylvania State University | Penn State · Department of Meteorology

Plain Language Summary Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are long and narrow weather features often referred to as “rivers in the sky.” They often transport water from lower latitudes to higher latitudes typically across climate zones and produce precipitation necessary for local climates. Understanding ARs in a warming climate is challenging because of the...

Atmospheric rivers, or long but narrow regions of enhanced water vapor transport, are an important component of the hydrologic cycle as they are responsible for much of the poleward transport of water vapor and result in precipitation, sometimes extreme in intensity. Despite their importance, much uncertainty remains in the detection of atmospheric...

Recent studies have demonstrated that high-resolution (~25 km) Earth System Models (ESMs) have the potential to skillfully predict tropical cyclone (TC) occurrence and intensity. However, biases in ESM TCs still exist, largely due to the need to parameterize processes such as boundary-layer (PBL) turbulence. Building on past studies, we hypothesize...

Plain Language Summary Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are a type of weather pattern known to be important for moving water from the warm, moist tropics to the cool, dry polar regions; when they reach midlatitudes in the winter time, they are commonly associated with heavy precipitation. Recent studies that assess the impacts of global climate change on A...

Although useful at short and medium-ranges, current dynamical models provide little additional skill for precipitation forecasts beyondWeek 2 (14 days). However, recent studies have demonstrated that downstream forcing by the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) and quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) influences subseasonal variability, and predictability,...

It is widely accepted that the Madden‐Julian Oscillation's (MJO) influence on North American temperature is strongest in winter. A growing body of literature demonstrates that the MJO also influences North American weather in other seasons. Here we use observations to investigate the seasonality and regionality of the MJO's impact on weather statio...

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) often generate extreme precipitation, with AR temperature strongly influencing hydrologic impacts by altering the timing and magnitude of runoff. Long‐term changes in AR temperatures therefore have important implications for regional hydroclimate—especially in locations where a shift to more rain‐dominated AR precipitation...

Many atmospheric river detection tools (ARDTs) have now been developed. However, their relative performance is not well documented. This paper compares a diverse set of ARDTs by applying them to a single location where a unique 12-year-long time-series from an atmospheric river observatory at Bodega Bay, California is available. The study quantifie...

In the United States, severe weather poses a threat to society, producing tornadoes and hail that can result in hundreds of casualties and billions of dollars in damages. Fortunately, skillful predictions of severe weather for short lead times of 0–8 days and longer lead times exceeding 1 month have been realized. However, this leaves a forecast ga...

Atmospheric rivers (ARs)-narrow corridors of high atmospheric water vapor transport-occur globally and are associated with flooding and maintenance of the water supply. Therefore, it is important to improve forecasts of AR occurrence and characteristics. Although prior work has examined the skill of numerical weather prediction (NWP) models in fore...

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) can cause wide-ranging impacts upon landfall at high northern latitudes, but comparatively little is known about the dynamics supporting these ARs in contrast to their midlatitude counterparts. Here ARs near the U.S. West Coast and the Gulf of Alaska during 1979–2015 are compared. ARs are found to occur in both regions with...