Europe/Western Russia Winter 2023-24 Forecast Verification

Winter 2023-24 forecast verification: The Climate Impact Company (CIC) DEC/JAN/FEB 2023-24 temperature and precipitation outlook scored exceptionally well except for the cold regime in Northwest Russia (Fig. 1). During winter 2023-24, stratospheric warming events causing a cold polar vortex in the troposphere was limited to Northwest Russia where arctic air was frequent. South of this cold zone, much of Europe was exceptionally warm. The clash between the warm and cold zones lead to a large area of excessive precipitation extending from U.K. through Central Europe and eastward to Southwest Russia and Kazakhstan (Fig. 2). The CIC outlook correctly predicted the very warm temperature anomaly across South-central Europe (Fig. 3) and the lengthy stretch of stormy weather (Fig. 4). Once again, the catalyst to the warm Europe climate (and forecast methodology) was the tendency for warm ridging across Europe downstream from a semi-permanent upper trough in the North Atlantic basin.

Fig. 1-4: The DEC/JAN/FEB 2023-24 temperature and precipitation anomaly verification (top) compared with the Climate Impact Company outlook (lower).