Mechanisms for the development of locally low-dimensional atmospheric dynamics

Oczkowski et al identify processes that contribute to transient local low-dimensional behavior. They also present case studies to show that local baroclinic and barotropic instabilities, downstream development of upper-tropospheric wave packets, phase shifts of finite amplitude waves, anticyclonic wave breaking, and some combinations of these processes can all play crucial roles in lowering the ensemble dimension. The practical implication of the results is that a wide range of synoptic-scale weather events may exist whose prediction can be significantly improved in the short and early medium range by enhancing the prediction of only a few local phase space directions.