Speaker:  Post Doctoral Fellow Lei Wang

Title: "Some thoughts on atmospheric blocking"

Abstract: Atmospheric blocking is an important process for both weather and climate, yet its first-order dynamics is still not well understood. The eddy straining mechanism of Shutts (1983) has been considered as the foundation to understanding the maintenance of blocks, which is consistent with the observation that strong wave breaking is always concurrent with strong blocks. Here we ask a question whether such a correlation is due to a causal relationship between the straining of generic eddies by the block and block enhancement, and we will attempt to answer this question by carrying out idealized simulations. Some theoretical considerations will be provided during the discussion to further aid the understanding.