A dynamical systems approach to studying midlatitude weather extremes

Extreme weather occurrences carry enormous social and economic costs and routinely garner widespread scientific and media coverage. The ability to predict these events is therefore a topic of crucial importance. Here we propose a novel predictability pathway for extreme events, by building upon recent advances in dynamical systems theory. We show that simple dynamical systems metrics can be used to identify sets of large-scale atmospheric flow patterns with similar spatial structure and temporal evolution on time scales of several days to a week. In regions where these patterns favor extreme weather, they afford a particularly good predictability of the extremes. We specifically test this technique on the atmospheric circulation in the North Atlantic region, where it provides predictability of large-scale wintertime surface temperature extremes in Europe up to 1week in advance. Plain Language Summary Extreme weather occurrences carry enormous social and economic costs and routinely garner widespread scientific and media coverage. The ability to predict these events is therefore a topic of crucial importance. Here we propose a novel analysis technique for improving the prediction of extreme events, which identifies the large-scale atmospheric circulation configurations affording the best predictability. We specifically test our technique on the atmospheric circulation in the North Atlantic region, where it provides predictability of large-scale wintertime surface temperature extremes in Europe up to 1week in advance.