Atmospheric dynamics over cold regions in a large-scale context

Mountains from the tropics to the polar zones have undergone obvious environmental changes for many decades, most notably by receding glaciers. Knowledge of the physical mechanisms, which transmit large-scale climate change to these “cold regions”, remains nonetheless unsatisfying. In particular, how mesoscale processes act as a bridge in both directions, on the one hand to the large-scale climate dynamics and, on the other, to local surface-layer dynamics, is still an understudied area of research. In this session we address such multi-scale linkages for mountain ranges worldwide, and bring together dynamical meteorology/climatology and cryospheric sciences. Possible mechanisms at different scales could be climate-mode driven flows, insolation-driven diurnal circulations, atmospheric rivers, or katabatic winds. High-resolution dynamical modeling, observations, detection and attribution, or machine-learning approaches can all be considered to identify the physical linkages. They will ultimately help to project climate change in cold regions on a stronger process-oriented basis.