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A strong link exists between stratospheric variability and anomalous weather patterns at the earth's surface. Specifically, during extreme variability of the Arctic polar vortex termed a ''weak vortex event,'' anomalies can descend from the upper stratosphere to the surface on time scales of weeks. Subsequently the outbreak of cold-air events have been noted in high northern latitudes, as well as a quadrupole pattern in surface temperature over the Atlantic and western European sectors, but it is currently not understood why certain events descend to the surface while others do not. This study compares a new classification technique of weak vortex events, based on the distribution of potential vorticity, with that of an existing technique and demonstrates that the subdivision of such events into vortex displacements and vortex splits has important implications for tropospheric weather patterns on weekly to monthly time scales. Using reanalysis data it is found that vortex splitting events are correlated with surface weather and lead to positive temperature anomalies over eastern North America of more than 1.5 K, and negative anomalies over Eurasia of up to 23 K. Associated with this is an increase in high-latitude blocking in both the Atlantic and Pacific sectors and a decrease in European blocking. The corresponding signals are weaker during displacement events, although ultimately they are shown to be related to cold-air outbreaks over North America. Because of the importance of stratospheretroposphere coupling for seasonal climate predictability, identifying the type of stratospheric variability in order to capture the correct surface response will be necessary.

Abstract. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has accepted the invitation from the UNFCCC to provide a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 • C above pre-industrial levels and on related global greenhouse-gas emission pathways. Many current experiments in, for example, the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP), are not specifically designed for informing this report. Here, we document the design of the half a degree additional warming, projections, prognosis and impacts (HAPPI) experiment. HAPPI provides a framework for the generation of climate data describing how the climate, and in particular extreme weather, might differ from the present day in worlds that are 1.5 and 2.0 • C warmer than pre-industrial conditions. Output from participating climate models includes variables frequently used by a range of impact models. The key challenge is to separate the impact of an additional approximately half degree of warming from uncertainty in climate model responses and internal climatePublished by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. Large ensembles of simulations (> 50 members) of atmosphere-only models for three time slices are proposed, each a decade in length: the first being the most recent observed 10-year period (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015), the second two being estimates of a similar decade but under 1.5 and 2 • C conditions a century in the future. We use the representative concentration pathway 2.6 (RCP2.6) to provide the model boundary conditions for the 1.5 • C scenario, and a weighted combination of RCP2.6 and RCP4.5 for the 2 • C scenario.