Can a Global Climate Model Reproduce a Tornado Outbreak Atmospheric Pattern? Methodology and a Case Study
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atmosphere-16-00923-v2.pdf
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3.74 MB
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Author(s)
Ćwik, Paulina
McPherson, Renee A.
Li, Funing
Furtado, Jason C.
Date Issued
July 30, 2025
Journal
Atmosphere
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Citation
Ćwik, P.; McPherson, R.A.; Li, F.; Furtado, J.C. Can a Global Climate Model Reproduce a Tornado Outbreak Atmospheric Pattern? Methodology and a Case Study. Atmosphere 2025, 16, 923.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Tornado outbreaks can cause substantial damage, injuries, and fatalities, highlighting the need to understand their characteristics for assessing present and future risks. However, global climate models (GCMs) lack the resolution to explicitly simulate tornado outbreaks. As an alternative, researchers examine large-scale atmospheric ingredients that approximate tornado-conducive environments. Building on this approach, we tested whether patterns of covariability between WMAXSHEAR and 500-hPa geopotential height anomalies, previously identified in ERA5 reanalysis, could approximate major U.S. May tornado outbreaks in a GCM. We developed a proxy-based methodology by systematically testing pairs of thresholds for both variables to identify the combination that best reproduced the leading pattern selected for analysis. These thresholds were then applied to simulations from the high-resolution MPI-ESM1.2-HR model to assess its ability to reproduce the original pattern. Results show that the model closely mirrored the observed tornado outbreak pattern, as indicated by a low normalized root mean square error, high spatial correlation, and similar distributions. This study demonstrates a replicable approach for approximating tornado outbreak patterns, applied here to the leading pattern, within a GCM, providing a foundation for future research on how such environments might evolve in a warming climate.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos16080923
