Nick Dunstone

Dados Biográficos

ID6820283
NOMENick Dunstone
PRENOMESNick
SOBRENOMEDunstone
ASSINATURADUNSTONE N
AFILIAÇÕESMet Office
ORCID0000-0001-6859-6814
VERIFICADOSim
TOTAL DE OBRAS19
TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES0
TOTAL COMO AUTOR19
TOTAL COMO EDITOR0
PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO2013
ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO2025
ÍNDICE H0

  • The risk and dynamics of unprecedented summer monsoon rainfall over Southeast China under the current climate

    Open AccessKmc Cheung, Ka Ho Cheung et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2025

    Under the influence of Asian summer monsoon, extremely heavy summer rainfall could occur in Southeast China, causing catastrophic social-economic impacts to the region. However, due to limited historical records, it is difficult to anticipate the risks of unprecedented extreme rainfall episodes. In this study the UNSEEN method (UNprecedented Simulated Extremes using ENsembles) is applied for studying these events, by sampling large ensemble clima…

  • Transition of El Niño to La Niña can be driven by regional perturbations a year ahead

    Open AccessChris Kent, Adam A Scaife et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2025

    Interannual forecasts provide skilful predictions of El Niño-Southern oscillation (ENSO) up to a year in advance, however our understanding of what drives the ensemble skill and diversity of outcomes across members is limited. Using a fully coupled ocean–atmosphere ensemble forecasting system, we investigate the causality of regional perturbations on the evolution of ENSO at interannual timescales. Using forecasts initialised on 1 November 2009, …

  • Eurasian mid-latitude jet stream bridges an Atlantic to Asia summer teleconnection in heat extremes

    Open AccessYu Nie, Hong‐Li Ren et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2024

    Northern Europe and Northeast Asia, which are climatologically mild and temperate in early summer, both witnessed record-breaking heat extremes in June 2023. With a focus on the subseasonal time scale, this study highlights a teleconnected relationship in historical early-summer heat extremes between Northern Europe and Northeast Asia. By diagnosing the thermal budget and wave activity flux, we show that over one third of historical Northeast Asi…

  • Contrasting East Asian climate extremes in 2020 and 2022 tied to zonal flow

    Open AccessChao He, Matthew Collins et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2024

    Subtropical East Asia (STEA) experienced a historic flood in the summer of 2020, and historic drought and heatwaves in the summer of 2022. Previous studies emphasized the role of western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH), but there is a paradox that the contrasting climate extremes over STEA in 2020 and 2022 are both associated with anomalously strong WPSH. Given that local vertical motion has a dominant control on precipitation variability, here w…

  • Enso and QBO modulation of the relationship between Arctic sea ice loss and Eurasian winter climate

    Open AccessXuan Ma, Lei Wang et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2022

    The causality between Arctic sea ice decline and cold boreal winters has been widely debated recently and remains controversial. A major source of uncertainty in the sea ice-cold winter relationship originates from that the stratosphere polar vortex (SPV) is not only affected by Arctic sea ice anomaly but can also be modulated by El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). Using reanalysis data and hindcasts from the…

  • Unprecedented climate extremes in South Africa and implications for maize production

    Open AccessCatherine P Bradshaw, Catherine D Bradshaw et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2022

    Maize is the most important crop grown in South Africa, but yields can be severely reduced by extreme high summer average temperatures and low precipitation, potentially adversely affecting both domestic consumption and regional food security exports. To help understand and manage climate risks to food security in Southern Africa it is essential to quantify the present-day likelihood and magnitude of climate extremes in South Africa’s maize-growi…

  • Assessing the chance of unprecedented dry conditions over North Brazil during El Niño events

    Open AccessGillian Kay, Nick Dunstone et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2022

    The strongest El Niño events of the past four decades were associated with large rainfall deficits in North Brazil during the December to February mature phase, leading to substantial societal and ecological impacts and influencing the global carbon cycle. While the teleconnection between El Niño and northern South America is well studied, the small number of El Niño events—and especially high magnitude ‘major’ El Niños—in the recent observationa…

  • How well can a seasonal forecast system represent three hourly compound wind and precipitation extremes over Europe

    Open AccessLaura Owen, Jennifer L Catto et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2021

    Extreme precipitation and winds can have a severe impact on society, particularly when they occur at the same place and time. In this study the Met Office’s Global Seasonal forecast system version 5 (GloSea5) model ensembles are evaluated against the reanalysis dataset ERA5, to find out how well they represent three hourly extreme precipitation, extreme wind and extreme co-occurring events over Europe. Although substantial differences in magnitud…

  • Skilful seasonal predictions of global monsoon summer precipitation with DePreSys3

    Open AccessPaul‐Arthur Monerie, Jon Robson et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2021

    We assess skill of the Met Office's DePreSys3 prediction system at forecasting summer global monsoon precipitation at the seasonal time scale (2-5 month forecast period). DePreSys3 has significant skill at predicting summer monsoon precipitation (r = 0.68), but the skill varies by region and is higher in the northern (r = 0.68) rather than in the southern hemisphere (r = 0.44)

  • Estimating unprecedented extremes in UK summer daily rainfall

    Open AccessChris Kent, Nick Dunstone et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2021

    The UNSEEN (unprecedented simulated extremes using ensemble) method involves using a large ensemble of climate model simulations to increase the sample size of rare events. Here we extend UNSEEN to focus on intense summertime daily rainfall, estimating plausible rainfall extremes in the current climate. To address modelling limitations simulations from two climate models were used; an initialised 25 km global model that uses parameterised convect…

  • Projected near-term changes of temperature extremes in Europe and China under different aerosol emissions

    Open AccessFeifei Luo, Laura J Wilcox et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2020

    This study assesses near-term future changes in temperature extremes over China and Europe in scenarios with two very different anthropogenic aerosol (AA) pathways from 2016 to 2049: a maximum technically feasible aerosol reduction (MTFR), and a current legislation aerosol scenario (CLE), both with greenhouses gas forcing following RCP 4.5. Simulations with a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean model HadGEM3-GC2 show that there is an increase in hot e…

  • Current chance of unprecedented monsoon rainfall over India using dynamical ensemble simulations

    Open AccessShipra Jain, Adam A Scaife et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2020

    In the past, India has suffered severe socio-economic losses due to recurring floods and droughts during boreal summer (June–August). In this analysis, we estimate the chance of extreme summer rainfall, i.e. flood and drought over India for the present climate using the UNprecedented Simulated Extremes using ENsembles (UNSEEN) method. This is the first application of the method to the hindcasts from multiple coupled atmosphere-ocean models. We fi…

  • Skilful interannual climate prediction from two large initialised model ensembles

    Open AccessNick Dunstone, Doug Smith et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2020

    Climate prediction skill on the interannual timescale, which sits between that of seasonal and decadal, is investigated using large ensembles from the Met Office and CESM initialised coupled prediction systems. A key goal is to determine what can be skillfully predicted about the coming year when combining these two ensembles together. Annual surface temperature predictions show good skill at both global and regional scales, but skill diminishes …

  • Current likelihood and dynamics of hot summers in the UK

    Open AccessGillian Kay, Nick Dunstone et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2020

    Summer 2018 in the United Kingdom (UK) was its joint hottest on record and the associated impacts raise questions over societal resilience to extremes of this magnitude or greater occurring in upcoming years. Better information on the current likelihood of extreme and unprecedented events feeds into improved understanding of risk, relevant for policy and contingency planning. However, making robust estimates of likelihood is difficult given that …

  • Skilful seasonal prediction of winter gas demand

    Open AccessHazel Thornton, Adam A Scaife et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2018

    In Britain, residential properties are predominantly heated using gas central heating systems. Ensuring a reliable supply of gas is therefore vital in protecting vulnerable sections of society from the adverse effects of cold weather. Ahead of the winter, the grid operator makes a prediction of gas demand to better anticipate possible conditions. Seasonal weather forecasts are not currently used to inform this demand prediction. Here we assess wh…

  • Using climate model simulations to assess the current climate risk to maize production

    Open AccessChris Kent, Edward Pope et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2017

    The relationship between the climate and agricultural production is of considerable importance to global food security. However, there has been relatively little exploration of climate-variability related yield shocks. The short observational yield record does not adequately sample natural inter-annual variability thereby limiting the accuracy of probability assessments. Focusing on the United States and China, we present an innovative use of ini…

  • The asymmetric response of Yangtze river basin summer rainfall to El Niño/La Niña

    Open AccessSteven C Hardiman, Nick Dunstone et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2017

    The Yangtze river basin, in South East China, experiences anomalously high precipitation in summers following El Niño. This can lead to extensive flooding and loss of life. However, the response following La Niña has not been well documented. In this study, the response of Yangtze summer rainfall to El Niño/La Niña is found to be asymmetric, with no significant response following La Niña. The nature of this asymmetric response is found to be in g…

  • Skillful seasonal predictions of winter precipitation over southern China

    Open AccessBo Lu, Adam A Scaife et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2017

    Southern China experiences large year-to-year variability in the amount of winter precipitation, which can result in severe social and economic impacts. In this study, we demonstrate prediction skill of southern China winter precipitation by three operational seasonal prediction models: the operational Global seasonal forecasting system version 5 (GloSea5), the NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFSv2) and the Beijing Climate Center Climate System Mod…

  • The influence of anthropogenic aerosol on multi-decadal variations of historical global climate

    Open AccessLaura J Wilcox, E J Highwood et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2013

    Analysis of single forcing runs from CMIP5 (the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) simulations shows that the mid-twentieth century temperature hiatus, and the coincident decrease in precipitation, is likely to have been influenced strongly by anthropogenic aerosol forcing. Models that include a representation of the indirect effect of aerosol better reproduce inter-decadal variability in historical global-mean near-surface temperatures…