Anticyclonic Rossby wave breaking (AWB)-associated vertical wind shear anomalies, 1979-2019

This repository comprises data generated for the study "Winter Rossby Wave Breaking Persistence in Extended-range Seasonal Forecasts of Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity" (Jones et al. 2021). The repository includes: i) The first four leading modes of tropical Atlantic vertical wind shear (seasonal); ii) Six-hourly (0Z, 6Z, 12Z, 18Z), monthly and seasonal indices of vertical wind shear anomalies associated with the downstream edge of anticyclonic Rossby wave breaking (AWB) detected over the North Atlantic region (20-40N, 100-5W); iii) An index of subtropical zonal wind anomalies projected against the correlation pattern between the second leading mode of July-September tropical Atlantic vertical wind shear and the January-March 200 hPa zonal wind field. The reanalysis dataset used is the ECMWF ERA-5 Reanalysis dataset. The wave breaking detection algorithm used to generate this index is outlined in Papin et al. (2020) and calculation of the AWB-associated shear is outlined in Jones et al. (2020). The data captures the main drivers (both tropical and subtropical) of summer tropical Atlantic vertical wind shear and is used in our study to quantify the added skill in extended-range statistical forecasts of tropical cyclone activity. For the original scripts that produced the archived indices, please contact the author at jhordanne.jones@colostate.edu or jhrdnnjones3@gmail.com