The Modulation of Natural Gas through Winter Climate and Cyclone Variability

Anomalously cold winters with extreme storms strain natural gas (NG) markets due to heightened demand for heating and electricity generation. Interrelated climate patterns of ocean and atmospheric circulation anomalies exhibit characteristics useful for developing effective seasonal outlooks of NG storage and consumption due to their influence on the persistence and intensity of extreme winter weather in North America. This study explores the connection between the Pacific-North American climate system and the NG market in the U.S., connecting macro-scale oceanic and atmospheric processes to regional NG storage and consumption. Smaller scale events, like winter cyclones, also have profound impacts on NG and energy usage. These winter storms present unique challenges for energy and NG industries because limited forecasting capability contributes to greater volatility in the market. Therefore, it is of interest to determine the effects of climate change on NG and the energy sector through trends in winter cyclones and the background climate conditions that give rise to extreme winter weather in the U.S. Western Pacific sea surface temperatures and an upper-level enhanced stationary pattern over North America describe significant variation in seasonal NG storage and consumption. The intensity of winter cyclones is also shown to be linked to the enhanced upper-level stationary pattern, indicating that this barotropic pattern modulates North American winter extremes and their impact on NG. Prediction of these coupled climate processes is useful for estimating NG storage and consumption.

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Figure 1: (a) Geopotential height (GPH) anomalies at the 250 hPa level for November – January of 2014, a winter with record-breaking natural gas consumption and pricing showing the enhanced stationary ridge-trough pattern characterized as the North American Winter Dipole (NAWD) (b) Time series of annual minimum NG storage and the average November through January NAWD index (calculated by subtracting the center of the eastern trough from the center of the western ridge). Winter fluctuation (November - January) in natural gas storage and consumption is shown to be strongly correlated to the NAWD (r=0.77 and r = 0.82 respectively).