Journal article

The great Arctic cyclone of August 2012

I Simmonds, I Rudeva

Geophysical Research Letters | Published : 2012

Abstract

On 2 August 2012 a dramatic storm formed over Siberia, moved into the Arctic, and died in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago on 14 August. During its lifetime its central pressure dropped to 966hPa, leading it to be dubbed 'The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012'. This cyclone occurred during a period when the sea ice extent was on the way to reaching a new satellite-era low, and its intense behavior was related to baroclinicity and a tropopause polar vortex. The pressure of the storm was the lowest of all Arctic August storms over our record starting in 1979, and the system was also the most extreme when a combination of key cyclone properties was considered. Even though, climatologically, su..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

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Funding Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to NCEP for making the CFSR and CFSV2 datasets readily available. Parts of this research were made possible by a grant from the Australian Research Council.