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Hauptverfasser: Wang, Shang, Meng, Jun, Fang, Sheng, Liu, Teng, Christensen, Kim, Kurths, Jürgen, Fan, Jingfang
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07674
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author Wang, Shang
Meng, Jun
Fang, Sheng
Liu, Teng
Christensen, Kim
Kurths, Jürgen
Fan, Jingfang
author_facet Wang, Shang
Meng, Jun
Fang, Sheng
Liu, Teng
Christensen, Kim
Kurths, Jürgen
Fan, Jingfang
contents Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are essential components of the global hydrological cycle, with profound implications for water resources, extreme weather events, and climate dynamics. Yet, the statistical organization and underlying physical mechanisms of AR intensity and evolution remain poorly understood. Here we apply methods from statistical physics to analyze the full life cycle of ARs and identify universal signatures of self-organized criticality (SOC). We demonstrate that AR morphology exhibits nontrivial fractal geometry, while AR event sizes, quantified via integrated water vapor transport, follow robust power-law distributions, displaying finite-size scaling. These scaling behaviors persist under warming scenarios, suggesting that ARs operate near a critical state as emergent, self-regulating systems. Concurrently, we observe a systematic poleward migration and intensification of ARs, linked to thermodynamic amplification and dynamical reorganization. Our findings establish a statistical physics framework for ARs, linking critical phenomena to the spatiotemporal structure of extreme events in a warming climate.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_07674
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Is the atmospheric river operating at a self-organized criticality state?
Wang, Shang
Meng, Jun
Fang, Sheng
Liu, Teng
Christensen, Kim
Kurths, Jürgen
Fan, Jingfang
Geophysics
Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are essential components of the global hydrological cycle, with profound implications for water resources, extreme weather events, and climate dynamics. Yet, the statistical organization and underlying physical mechanisms of AR intensity and evolution remain poorly understood. Here we apply methods from statistical physics to analyze the full life cycle of ARs and identify universal signatures of self-organized criticality (SOC). We demonstrate that AR morphology exhibits nontrivial fractal geometry, while AR event sizes, quantified via integrated water vapor transport, follow robust power-law distributions, displaying finite-size scaling. These scaling behaviors persist under warming scenarios, suggesting that ARs operate near a critical state as emergent, self-regulating systems. Concurrently, we observe a systematic poleward migration and intensification of ARs, linked to thermodynamic amplification and dynamical reorganization. Our findings establish a statistical physics framework for ARs, linking critical phenomena to the spatiotemporal structure of extreme events in a warming climate.
title Is the atmospheric river operating at a self-organized criticality state?
topic Geophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07674