Last edited 15 Apr 2025

Atmospheric rivers

Climate Change 2021 – The Physical Science Basis, Annex VII: Glossary, written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and published by Cambridge University Press in 2023, defines atmospheric rivers (ARs) as: ‘Long, narrow (up to a few hundred km wide), shallow (up to a few km deep) and transient corridors of strong horizontal water vapour transport that are typically associated with a low-level jet stream ahead of the cold front of an extratropical cyclone (ETC)’

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