Diagnosing flavors of tropospheric Rossby wave breaking and their associated dynamical and sensible weather features

Rossby wave breaking (RWB) occurs when synoptic-scale Rossby waves become highly amplified and break, leading to tropospheric impacts ranging from changes in jet stream intensity and position to precipitation extremes. Traditionally, the type of breaking is categorized as anticyclonic (AWB) or cyclonic (CWB) and can be identified using the orientation of streamers of high potential temperature ($\theta$) and low $\theta$ air on a potential vorticity surface. An examination of the range of tropospheric impacts associated with RWB due to difference in RWB structure remains unexplored. In this study, AWB and CWB are identified from overturning isentropes on the dynamic tropopause (DT) in the ERA5 reanalysis dataset during December, January, and February 1979-2019. Self-organizing maps (SOM), a machine learning method, is used to cluster the identified RWB events into archetypal patterns, or ``flavors", for each type. AWB and CWB flavors capture variations in the minima/maxima of $\theta$ of each streamer and the localized meridional $\theta$ gradient flanking the streamers. Variations of the meridional potential temperature gradient on the DT coincided with differences in the troposphere-deep circulations between AWB/CWB flavors. A subset of flavors of AWB (CWB) events are associated with the development of strong surface high (low) pressure systems and the generation of extreme poleward moisture transport. For CWB, many events occurred in similar geographical regions, but the precipitation and moisture patterns were vastly different between flavors. Our findings suggest that the location, type, and severity of the tropospheric impacts from RWB are strongly dictated by RWB flavor.