Large-scale atmospheric circulation dynamics are the major driver of near surface climatic and environmental variability. Synoptic climatology examines atmospheric circulation dynamics and their relationship with near surface environmental variables. Within synoptic climatological analyses, a wide variety of methods is utilized to characterize atmospheric circulation (e.g., circulation and weather type classification, regime analysis, teleconnection indices). Various linear and non-linear approaches (e.g., multiple regression, canonical correlation, neural networks) are applied to relate the circulation dynamics to diverse climatic and environmental elements (e.g., air temperature, air pollution, floods).

The session welcomes contributions from the whole field of synoptic climatology. This includes application studies for varying regions, time periods (past, present, future) and target variables and in particular contributions on the development and the comparison of methods (e.g., varying circulation type classifications) and conceptual approaches (e.g., circulation types versus circulation regimes).