Investigation of the vertical structure of the lower atmosphere during heat wave conditions

The research on heat waves is strongly motivated by their impacts on human
life and the economy. Consequently, less research has been done on the
state of the lower atmosphere as a whole during these extreme events,
although it may play a role in the formation and persistence of heat
waves. Miralles et al. (2014) show that different factors must come
together to produce extremes such as the pronounced heat waves
in the year 2003 in France and 2010 in Russia. One interesting phenomenon
in this context is the emergence of an unusually deep boundary layer. The aim
of this work is to analyse whether this feature is a common trait of European
heat waves in general. To this end, we systematically investigate the vertical
structure and evolution of the lower atmosphere during heat waves in the
time period from 2014 to 2018. COSMO-REA6 data is used to find heatwaves
and provides vertical profiles of the atmosphere which we also compare
to radio sonde measurements. The results of our work could possibly be
used to improve the discriminability of different severity levels of heat waves or to
formulate a heat wave measure that is not based solely on surface variables.