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Quasi-stationary Rossby waves as a previously overlooked driver of extreme short-duration rainfall in Europe

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Anna Whitford, Professor Hayley Fowler, Professor Paul Davies

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Abstract

© 2026 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Sub-daily rainfall extremes cause some of the most damaging flood events in Europe, yet the role of large-scale atmospheric dynamics in shaping these short-duration events remains poorly understood. Here we analyse the 20 most intense 3 h rainfall events from gauges in the UK and Germany and show that they are consistently preceded by a high-wavenumber quasi-stationary Rossby wave (QSW) pattern. We identify a long-lived anticyclonic ridge over Scandinavia or the North Sea that develops 4–5 d before the events, accompanied by multi-day positive temperature anomalies indicative of heatwave conditions. After the QSW shifts eastward, a downstream trough moves into the region, providing large-scale ascent that triggers extreme rainfall. Our results identify a clear dynamical pathway linking planetary-scale Rossby waves, heat accumulation from blocked conditions, and sub-daily rainfall extremes. We conclude that the future evolution of QSW behaviour may have important consequences for short-duration rainfall extremes in Europe.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Whitford AC, White RH, Fowler HJ, Davies PA

Publication type: Letter

Publication status: Published

Journal: Environmental Research Letters

Year: 2026

Volume: 21

Issue: 13

Online publication date: 03/07/2026

Acceptance date: 19/06/2026

ISSN (electronic): 1748-9326

Publisher: Institute of Physics

URL: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae7fa1

DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ae7fa1

Data Access Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at the following URL/DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8369986. Supplementary Information available at https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae7fa1/data1.

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