Radiative cooling during the long winter night is capable of inducing intense, shallow anticyclonic circulations, that persist between late autumn and early spring over the vast continental land masses of Siberia and Canada. Although located away from the North Pole, the cold air masses embedded in these anticyclones feature the lowest surface temperatures and highest sea-level pressures measured over the Northern Hemisphere.

The concept of Boreal Cold Air Reservoir (BCAR) is introduced to encompass the thermodynamics (i.e., the cold air) and the dynamics (i.e., the anticyclonic circulations) of these systems, that are fundamentally driven by diabatic cooling. In a newly funded project, we aim at providing a global perspective of the origin, variability and large-scale impacts of BCARs, as well as assessing their fate in a warmer climate.

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