Synoptic Analysis

Over long periods of time, the primary circulation features in the atmosphereAtmosphere and ocean, secondary atmospheric circulations, and mesoscaleMesoscale ocean eddies tend to produce “expected” patterns. Our ability to recognize these patterns and the impacts that they typically produce in the form of weather and climate, along with the temporal changes in those patterns, is important, not only for weather and climate forecasting purposes, but for making our society more resilient to weather and climate extremes. Scientists can identify the patterns and their changes over timeTime through two primary strategies. The modeling approach is used mainly (but not exclusively) by meteorologists and oceanographers. The empirical approach involves examining atmospheric patterns based on the data and trying to explain deductively why they occur as they do. The study of the relationship between atmospheric circulation patterns understood from either the modeling or empirical approaches and the climate at the surface is known as synoptic climatologyand synoptic climatology, which can be done either as an air mass or flow pattern approach. In recent years, “Big DataBig Data” approaches to synoptic climatology have become powerful tools toward understanding relationships between atmospheric circulation and the environment.