Eos: Slow atmospheric circulations shape storm tracks and wave-breaking patterns
Tracks of low-level cyclones during different weather regimes in the North Atlantic. Shown are the 500 hectopascal (hPa) Geopotential height anomalies (colors) and total winds (arrows), tracks of low-level weather systems (thin lines), and the jet-stream axis (red line) for the Atlantic Ridge regime. Image credit: Tamarin-Brodsky et al. [2026], Figure 1a
The American Geophysical Union’s magazine, Eos, highlighted recent work by Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences Class of 1947 Career Development Professor Talia Tamarin-Brodsky that explores the connections between fast and slow parts of atmospheric circulations. In a paper published in AGU Advances, Tamarin-Brodsky and her fellow authors, Nili Harnik and Swinda Falkena, used 35 years of atmospheric data to derive a simplified wave-breaking equation that explains the distribution of Rossby wave-breaking events and how they connect to weather patterns influenced by jet streams.
Read the editor’s highlight at Eos to learn how these wave-breaking patterns steer storm tracks and offer insight into the interaction between daily weather systems and larger climate patterns.
Key points from the 48th MIT Global Change Forum
April 6, 2026