A Global Climatology of Sting Jet Cyclones

Oral Presentation 

Sting jets have been identified in several of the most damaging mid-latitude cyclones impacting 
northwest Europe. In contrast to the major long-lived cyclone wind jets, sting jets can lead to regions 
of exceptionally strong near-surface winds, and particularly damaging gusts, over just a few hours 
and with much smaller wind “footprints”. Research to date has focused exclusively on cyclones 
crossing the North Atlantic, although there are no known physical reasons why sting jets should not 
develop over other oceanic basins. We have produced the first global climatology of sting-jet 
cyclones, revealing their presence and frequency over all major ocean basins and characterising 
differences between these cyclones and those that do not contain sting jets.

A sting jet precursor diagnostic has been applied to more than 10,000 tracked cyclones, the most 
intense (top 10% in terms of maximum intensity) warm seclusion cyclones in midlatitude regions 
globally, using over 40 years of data from the ERA5 reanalysis. The applicability of this diagnostic, 
which identifies mesoscale instability in the cyclone cloud head, outside of the North Atlantic region 
in which its use has been previously validated has been tested by evaluating its behaviour for a set of 
“notable storms”. Cyclones with sting jet precursors are found to occur over the North Pacific and 
Southern Ocean, as well as over the North Atlantic, though they are more prevalent in the Northern 
Hemisphere (37% of cyclones) compared to the Southern Hemisphere (20%). Sting jet precursor 
cyclones have distinct characteristics to those cyclones without the precursor in terms of their 
average track, composite structure and intensity. These differences evidence the climatological 
consequences of strong diabatic cloud processes on cyclone characteristics.