ALBERT

Description: Following an earlier climatological study of North Pacific Polar Lows by employing dynamical downscaling of NCEP1 reanalysis in the regional climate model COSMO-CLM, the characteristics of Polar Low genesis over the North Pacific under different global warming scenarios are investigated. Simulations based on three scenarios from the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios were conducted using a global climate model (ECHAM5) and used to examine systematic changes in the occurrence of Polar Lows over the twenty first century. The results show that with more greenhouse gas emissions, global air temperature would rise, and the frequency of Polar Lows would decrease. With sea ice melting, the distribution of Polar Low genesis shows a northward shift. In the scenarios with stronger warming there is a larger reduction in the number of Polar Lows.

Description: This study aims at assessing the skill of several climate field reconstruction techniques (CFR) to reconstruct past precipitation over continental Europe and the Mediterranean at seasonal time scales over the last two millennia from proxy records. A number of pseudoproxy experiments are performed within the virtual reality of a regional paleoclimate simulation at 45 km resolution to analyse different aspects of reconstruction skill. Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA), two versions of an Analog Method (AM) and Bayesian hierarchical modeling (BHM) are applied to reconstruct precipitation from a synthetic network of pseudoproxies that are contaminated with various types of noise. The skill of the derived reconstructions is assessed through comparison with precipitation simulated by the regional climate model. Unlike BHM, CCA systematically underestimates the variance. The AM can be adjusted to overcome this shortcoming, presenting an intermediate behaviour between the two aforementioned techniques. However, a trade-off between reconstruction-target correlations and reconstructed variance is the drawback of all CFR techniques. CCA (BHM) presents the largest (lowest) skill in preserving the temporal evolution, whereas the AM can be tuned to reproduce better correlation at the expense of losing variance. While BHM has been shown to perform well for temperatures, it relies heavily on prescribed spatial correlation lengths. While this assumption is valid for temperature, it is hardly warranted for precipitation. In general, none of the methods outperforms the other. All experiments agree that a dense and regularly distributed proxy network is required to reconstruct precipitation accurately, reflecting its high spatial and temporal variability. This is especially true in summer, when a specifically short de-correlation distance from the proxy location is caused by localised summertime convective precipitation events.

Description: El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) plays a dominant role in interannual climate variability in Pacific island countries, directly affecting lives there. Many countries show different rainfall responses depending on the sea surface temperature (SST) structure of different types of El Nino events. El Niño events are classified into three types based on previous studies: those with strongest SST anomalies in the eastern Pacific Cold Tongue region (CTE), in the Western Pacific Warm Pool region (WPE), and those in between, a “Mixed” El Niño (MxE), and results from 30 CMIP5 models are investigated. These models accurately reproduce observed SST and precipitation anomalies for the three El Niño types and La Niña. CMIP5 models simulate much larger ranges in the strength of ENSO events than observed. Results clarify the roles of both the different structures of El Niño SST anomalies and their magnitudes on rainfall in the Pacific, and demonstrate that each of the three El Niño types has different impacts on rainfall in the region. These impacts vary with location, with WPE and CTE producing very different impacts in most Pacific island countries. There is a linear intensification of both the mean and maximum rainfall anomalies in the equatorial Pacific as the events become stronger. Equatorial rainfall shifts eastward in CTE and MxE, westward in La Niña. Both the South Pacific and Intertropical Convergence Zones (SPCZ and ITCZ) shift equatorward in El Niño and poleward in La Niña, the shifts increasing as events strengthen. WPE show different behaviour to other events, with little east-west shift in equatorial rainfall, and the orientation angle of the convergence zones increases. Identification of models with no erroneous westward bias in SST anomalies has clarified the effect of strong CTE events producing “zonal” SPCZ and shifting rainfall away to the east from western equatorial countries.

Description: This study investigates the teleconnections between the tropical Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in 15 state-of-the-art fully coupled general circulation models and Earth system models without external SST forcing. In contrast to other studies, the teleconnection is considered in both directions—from the Pacific to the Atlantic and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The model ensemble is generally able to simulate the propagation of atmospheric and oceanic signals to the adjacent ocean basin, generated by warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the tropical eastern oceans with Atlantic summer events lagging or leading Pacific boreal winter events. This is investigated by means of time-lagged composite analyses of different atmospheric parameters, including sea level pressure, wind, stream function, velocity potential, vertical air movement and divergent wind at several levels. However, the modelled inter-basin teleconnection and its correct frequency of occurrence depend on the strong warm SST biases in the Atlantic Benguela upwelling region and in the Pacific Ocean.

Description: Precipitation over the tropical Atlantic in 24 atmospheric models is analyzed using an object-based approach, which clusters rainy areas in the models as precipitation objects and calculates their properties such as size, amplitude, and location. Based on the distribution of precipitation objects over land and over ocean, two classes of models emerge. The first class of models has a reasonable representation of objects over land but misplaces the ocean object westward, near the coast of Brazil, instead of the central Atlantic as observed. The second class of models show small-sized objects over land with intense precipitation values; for these models, the ocean object is located eastward, near the coast of Guinea. The Atlantic intertropical convergence zone structure in the models exhibits either the West or the East Atlantic bias. No model matches the observed precipitation distribution. The two distinct model behaviors in the mean state are traced to the coastal precipitation bias of the models in boreal spring. In this season, the two model groups place the main precipitation object on opposite coasts—one group puts it at the south coast of Brazil and the other group places it at the Gulf of Guinea. This west–east partitioning of precipitation is sustained in boreal summer, resulting in the West and East Atlantic bias in the annual mean. It is found that models with the East Atlantic bias tend to be high resolution models which rain excessively over the Gulf of Guinea starting from boreal spring.

Description: The response of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) to an increase of radiative forcing (ramp-up) and a subsequent reversal of radiative forcing (ramp-down) is analyzed for four different global climate models. Due to changes in ocean temperature and hydrological cycle, all models show a weakening of the AMOC during the ramp-up phase. Once the external forcing is reversed, the results become model dependent. For IPSL-CM5A-LR, the AMOC continues its weakening trend for most of the ramp-down experiment. For HadGEM2-ES, the AMOC trend reverses once the external forcing also reverses, without recovering its initial value. For EC-EARTH and MPI-ESM-LR the recovery is anomalously strong yielding an AMOC overshoot. A robust linear dependency can be established between AMOC and density difference between North Atlantic (NA) deep water formation region and South Atlantic (SA). In particular, AMOC evolution is primarily controlled by a meridional salinity contrast between these regions. During the warming scenario, the subtropical Atlantic becomes saltier while the NA experiences a net freshening which favours an AMOC weakening. The different behaviour in the models during the ramp-down is dependent on the response of the ocean at the boundaries of NA and SA. The way in which the positive salinity anomaly stored in the subtropical Atlantic during the ramp-up is subsequently released elsewhere, characterizes the recovery. An out-of-phase response of the salinity transport at \(48^{\circ }\hbox {N}\) and \(34^{\circ }\hbox {S}\) boundaries is able to control the meridional density contrast between NA and SA during the transient experiments. Such a non-synchronized response is mainly controlled by changes in gyre salinity transport rather than by changes in overturning transport, thus suggesting a small role of the salt advection feedback in the evolution of the AMOC.

Description: It is well known that the Sahel region of Africa is impacted by decadal scale variability in precipitation, driven by global sea surface temperatures. This work demonstrates that the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Community Atmosphere Model, version 4 is capable of reproducing relationships between Sahelian precipitation variability and Indian and Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperature variations on such timescales. Further analysis then constructs a moisture budget breakdown using model output and shows that the change in precipitation minus evaporation in the region is dominated by column integrated moisture convergence due to the mean flow, with the convergence of mass in the atmospheric column mainly responsible. It is concluded that the oceanic forcing of atmospheric mass convergence and divergence to a first order explains the moisture balance patterns in the region. In particular, the anomalous circulation patterns, including net moisture divergence by the mean and transient flows combined with negative moisture advection, together explain the drying of the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century. Diagnosis of moisture budget and circulation components within the main rainbelt and along the monsoon margins show that changes to the mass convergence are related to the magnitude of precipitation that falls in the region, while the advection of dry air is associated with the maximum latitudinal extent of precipitation.

Description: The enhanced central and eastern Pacific SST warming and the associated ocean processes under global warming are investigated using the ocean component of the Community Earth System Model (CESM), Parallel Ocean Program version 2 (POP2). The tropical SST warming pattern in the coupled CESM can be faithfully reproduced by the POP2 forced with surface fluxes computed using the aerodynamic bulk formula. By prescribing the wind stress and/or wind speed through the bulk formula, the effects of wind stress change and/or the wind-evaporation-SST (WES) feedback are isolated and their linearity is evaluated in this ocean-alone setting. Result shows that, although the weakening of the equatorial easterlies contributes positively to the El Niño-like SST warming, 80 % of which can be simulated by the POP2 without considering the effects of wind change in both mechanical and thermodynamic fluxes. This result points to the importance of the air–sea thermal interaction and the relative feebleness of the ocean dynamical process in the El Niño-like equatorial Pacific SST response to global warming. On the other hand, the wind stress change is found to play a dominant role in the oceanic response in the tropical Pacific, accounting for most of the changes in the equatorial ocean current system and thermal structures, including the weakening of the surface westward currents, the enhancement of the near-surface stratification and the shoaling of the equatorial thermocline. Interestingly, greenhouse gas warming in the absence of wind stress change and WES feedback also contributes substantially to the changes at the subsurface equatorial Pacific. Further, this warming impact can be largely replicated by an idealized ocean experiment forced by a uniform surface heat flux, whereby, arguably, a purest form of oceanic dynamical thermostat is revealed.

Description: Based on daily rainfall data collected at 395 gauge stations over eastern China during 1979–2009, the variation in light rain days with intensities of 0.1–10 mm day −1 in the summer half of the year was analyzed. Results indicate that both the light rain amount and the number of light rain days decline distinctly, with trends of −4.89 mm (10 year) −1 and −2.48 days (10 year) −1 , respectively. The first two principal components of EOF analysis on light rain days not only show a long-term decrease, but also depict regional differences; specifically, light rain days decline more distinctly in northeastern and southern regions of eastern China. Spatial and temporal features, as well as the periods derived from the EOF analysis of temperature, precipitable water content, and relative humidity in the lower troposphere, coincide with those of light rain days. Composite analysis also suggests that there are fewer light rain days in years with lower relative humidity and precipitable water content in the lower troposphere, while there are fewer light rain days in years with higher tropospheric temperatures. According to the Clausius–Clapeyron equation and the relative humidity equations, relative humidity over eastern China during the period studied decreases by 5.5 % due to lower-tropospheric warming, and decreases by 0.16 % because of the decrease in specific humidity in the same period. Both warming and water vapor content are the reasons for light rain reduction, and warming is deemed the primary cause.

Description: Based on observations and a set of Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP)-type simulations, the climatic characteristics and dominant spatial patterns of summer rainfall on tropospheric biennial oscillation (TBO) time scales over the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) region were examined, and the association with sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) and El Niño-Southern Oscillation were analyzed. It was noted that to some extent, the AMIP run successfully simulated the spatial distribution and amplitude of the observed TBO component. Furthermore, the AMIP ensemble mean increased the fraction of total variance of the TBO component, suggesting that SSTAs may have a rainfall response over the EASM region on TBO time scales. The analysis also indicated that a spatial pattern of rainfall on TBO time scales with opposite variations between northern and southern China showed a consistent and robust relationship with SSTAs in the tropical Pacific Ocean in both the AMIP simulations and observations. Statistically,when an El Niño (La Niña) develops, northern China favors dry (wet) conditions and southern China favors wet (dry) conditions at TBO time scales.

Description: We examine the tropical inversion strength, measured by the estimated inversion strength (EIS), and its response to climate change in 18 models associated with phase 5 of the coupled model intercomparison project (CMIP5). While CMIP5 models generally capture the geographic distribution of observed EIS, they systematically underestimate it off the west coasts of continents, due to a warm bias in sea surface temperature. The negative EIS bias may contribute to the low bias in tropical low-cloud cover in the same models. Idealized perturbation experiments reveal that anthropogenic forcing leads directly to EIS increases, independent of “temperature-mediated” EIS increases associated with long-term oceanic warming. This fast EIS response to anthropogenic forcing is strongly impacted by nearly instantaneous continental warming. The temperature-mediated EIS change has contributions from both uniform and non-uniform oceanic warming. The substantial EIS increases in uniform oceanic warming simulations are due to warming with height exceeding the moist adiabatic lapse rate in tropical warm pools. EIS also increases in fully-coupled ocean–atmosphere simulations where \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) concentration is instantaneously quadrupled, due to both fast and temperature-mediated changes. The temperature-mediated EIS change varies with tropical warming in a nonlinear fashion: The EIS change per degree tropical warming is much larger in the early stage of the simulations than in the late stage, due to delayed warming in the eastern parts of the subtropical oceans. Given the importance of EIS in regulating tropical low-cloud cover, this suggests that the tropical low-cloud feedback may also be nonlinear .

Description: The Mediterranean area is strongly vulnerable to future changes in temperature and precipitation, particularly concerning extreme events, and has been identified as a climate change hot spot. This study performs a comprehensive investigation of present-day and future Mediterranean precipitation extremes based on station data, gridded observations and simulations of the regional climate model (REMO) driven by the coupled global general circulation model ECHAM5/MPI-OM. Extreme value estimates from different statistical methods—quantile-based indices, generalized pareto distribution (GPD) based return values and data from a weather generator—are compared and evaluated. Dynamical downscaling reveals improved small-scale topographic structures and more realistic higher rainfall totals and extremes over mountain ranges and in summer. REMO tends to overestimate gridded observational data in winter but is closer to local station information. The dynamical–statistical weather generator provides virtual station rainfall from gridded REMO data that overcomes typical discrepancies between area-averaged model rainfall and local station information, e.g. overestimated numbers of rainy days and underestimated extreme intensities. Concerning future rainfall amount, strong summer and winter drying over the northern and southern Mediterranean, respectively, is confronted with winter wetting over the northern part. In contrast, precipitation extremes tend to increase in even more Mediterranean areas, implying regions with decreasing totals but intensifying extremes, e.g. southern Europe and Turkey in winter and the Balkans in summer. The GPD based return values reveal slightly larger regions of increasing rainfall extremes than quantile-based indices, and the virtual stations from the weather generator show even stronger increases.

Description: Two sets of 62-year (1948–2009) and 21-year (1989–2009) high-resolution hindcasts of the meteorological sea level component have been developed for Southern Europe using the Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS) of Rutgers University. These new databases, named GOS 1.1 and GOS 2.1, are a valuable tool for a wide variety of studies, such as those related to a better understanding of sea level variability, flooding risk and coastal engineering studies. The model domain encloses Southern Europe, including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic coast, with a horizontal resolution of 1/8° (~14 km). In order to study the effect of the atmospheric forcing resolution, ROMS is driven with two different regional atmospheric forcings: SeaWind I (30 km of horizontal resolution) and SeaWind II (15 km of horizontal resolution). Both are the result of a dynamical downscaling from global atmospheric reanalysis: NCEP global reanalysis and ERA-Interim global reanalysis, respectively. As a result, two surge data sets are obtained: GOS 1.1 (forced with SeaWind I) and GOS 2.1 (forced with SeaWind II). Surge elevations calculated by ROMS are compared with in situ measurements from tide gauges in coastal areas and with open ocean satellite observations. The validation procedure, testing outcomes from GOS 1.1 and GOS 2.1 against observations, shows the capability of the model to simulate accurately the sea level variation induced by the meteorological forcing. A description of the surge in terms of seasonality and long term trends is also made. The climate variability analysis reveals clear seasonal patterns in the Mediterranean Sea basins. A long-term negative trend for the period 1948–2009 is found, whilst positive trends are computed for the last 20 years (GOS 2.1).

Description: Quality controlled and recently homogenised mean sea level pressure records for the South Pacific are used to specify the location and variability of the South Pacific convergence zone (SPCZ) during the austral warm season (November–April). The SPCZ is the world’s largest rainfall band during the austral summer, when it dominates the climate of the South Pacific. A new index called the South Pacific convergence zone index (SPCZI) is derived, and is shown to be coherent with changes in low level wind convergence associated with the SPCZ. This index replaces the earlier SPCZ position index because it uses higher quality mean sea level pressure data than the superseded index and extends the time series further forward in time. The SPCZI allows interannual to decadal variability in the climate of the South Pacific to be tracked for more than a century from 1910/1911 to 2011/2012. During El Niño episodes the SPCZ is displaced by about 1°–3° east, and La Niña events 1°–3° west of the mean position on average. The index indicates a striking movement eastward for the period 1977/78–1998/99, compared with 1944/45–1976/77 in association with the Interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO). The eastward movement of the SPCZ in the late twentieth century is related to significant precipitation trends in the South Pacific region. Since 1998/99 the SPCZ has regressed westward with the negative phase change of the IPO. The long-term trend in the SPCZI is very small relative to the interannual to decadal variability and is not statistically significant, suggesting that there has been little overall change in the mean position of the SPCZ over the past century.

Description: The 1907–2001 summer-to-summer surface air temperature variability in the eastern part of southern South America (SSA, partly including Patagonia) is analysed. Based on records from instruments located next to the Atlantic Ocean (36°S–55°S), we define indices for the interannual and interdecadal timescales. The main interdecadal mode reflects the late-1970s cold-to-warm climate shift in the region and a warm-to-cold transition during early 1930s. Although it has been in phase with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index since the 1960s, they diverged in the preceding decades. The main interannual variability index exhibits high spectral power at ~3.4 years and is representative of temperature variability in a broad area in the southern half of the continent. Eleven-years running correlation coefficients between this index and December-to-February (DJF) Niño3.4 show significant decadal fluctuations, out-of-phase with the running correlation with a DJF index of the Southern Annular Mode. The main interannual variability index is associated with a barotropic wavetrain-like pattern extending over the South Pacific from Oceania to SSA. During warm (cold) summers in SSA, significant anticyclonic (cyclonic) anomalies tend to predominate over eastern Australia, to the north of the Ross Sea, and to the east of SSA, whereas anomalous cyclonic (anticyclonic) circulation is observed over New Zealand and west of SSA. This teleconnection links warm (cold) SSA anomalies with dry (wet) summers in eastern Australia. The covariability seems to be influenced by the characteristics of tropical forcing; indeed, a disruption has been observed since late 1970s, presumably due to the PDO warm phase.

Description: The Indian summer monsoon is a highly energetic global atmospheric circulation system. Although the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been statistically effective in explaining several past droughts in India, in recent decades the ENSO-monsoon relationship has weakened over the Indian subcontinent. In this context, a teleconnection with other dominant modes is of interest. The present study focuses on the mutual impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Southern Annular Mode (SAM) on the regional variability of the Indian summer monsoon. Strong El Nino and La Nina years are excluded to find the interaction between extratropics and Indian summer monsoon. During the synchronous effect of these extratropical modes, the intensity as well as the spatial distribution of rainfall anomalies varies significantly in the western coastal region, eastern part of central and northeast India. The decrease in rainfall along the southwest coastal regions is related to the reduced zonal moisture transport. Significant reduction in moisture transport occurs in the positive phase of SAM and the negative phase of the NAO. The thermal gradient developed between the Indian landmass and southern tropical ocean differs significantly during the simultaneous impact of these modes. Moreover, the spatial variation and change in intensity of summer monsoon (July–August) parameters associated with SAM depend on the respective phase of the NAO. These results will help to open new areas of research on the simultaneous teleconnection of the two hemispheric modes on circulation features and weather systems.

Description: A significant negative correlation between the total rainfall averaged over South Korea and the Niño-3.4 index was found for the month of September. To find out the reason for this negative correlation, composite analyses were carried out for the highest and lowest 8 years of the Niño-3.4 index. During the strong El Niño year, an anomalous anticyclone occurs in the continental East Asia, while an anomalous cyclone emerges in the subtropical western Pacific. The resultant eastward pressure gradient force induces anomalous northerlies in most regions of East Asia, which produces anomalous cold and dry conditions throughout the troposphere between 120° and 140°E, reducing the Korean rainfall. It is also found that during El Niño year, tropical cyclones (TCs) tend to recurve far east offshore of Japan because the weakening of the western North Pacific subtropical high (WNPSH). During La Niña years, on the other hand, the strengthening and westward extension of the WNPSH render more TCs influencing the Korean peninsula. Therefore, the TC track changes associated with El Niño-Southern Oscillation is another contributor to change of the Korean rainfall.

Description: Interdecadal variability of observed winter precipitation in Southeast China (1961–2010) is characterized by the first empirical orthogonal function of the three-monthly Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) subjected to a 9-year running mean. For interdecadal time scales the dominating spatial modes represent monopole features involving the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and the sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies. Dynamic composite analysis (based on NCEP/NCAR reanalyzes) reveals the following results: (1) Interdecadal SPI-variations show a trend from a dryer state in the 1970s via an increase during the 1980s towards stabilization on wetter conditions commencing with the 1990s. (2) Increasing wetness in Southeast China is attributed to an abnormal anticyclone over south Japan, with northward transport of warm and humid air from the tropical Pacific to South China. (3) In mid-to-high latitudes the weakened southward flow of polar airmasses induces low-level warming over Eurasia due to stronger AO by warmer zonal temperature advection. This indicates that AO is attributed to the Southeast China precipitation increase influenced by circulation anomalies over the mid-to-high latitudes. (4) The abnormal moisture transport along the southwestern boundary of the abnormal anticyclone over south Japan is related to anomalous south-easterlies modulated by the SST anomalies over Western Pacific Ocean; a positive (negative) SST anomaly will strengthen (weaken) warm and humid air transport, leading to abundant (reduced) precipitation in Southeast China. That is both AO and SST anomalies determine the nonlinear trend observed in winter precipitation over Southeast China.

Description: We extend the analysis of the thermodynamics of the climate system by investigating the role played by processes taking place at various spatial and temporal scales through a procedure of coarse graining. We show that the coarser is the graining of the climatic fields, the lower is the resulting estimate of the material entropy production. In other terms, all the spatial and temporal scales of variability of the thermodynamic fields provide a positive contribution to the material entropy production. This may be interpreted also as that, at all scales, the temperature fields and the heating fields resulting from the convergence of turbulent fluxes have a negative correlation, while the opposite holds between the temperature fields and the radiative heating fields. Moreover, we obtain that the latter correlations are stronger, which confirms that radiation acts as primary driver for the climatic processes, while the material fluxes dampen the resulting fluctuations through dissipative processes. We also show, using specific coarse-graining procedures, how one can separate the various contributions to the material entropy production coming from the dissipation of kinetic energy, the vertical sensible and latent heat fluxes, and the large scale horizontal fluxes, without resorting to the full three-dimensional time dependent fields. We find that most of the entropy production is associated to irreversible exchanges occurring along the vertical direction, and that neglecting the horizontal and time variability of the fields has a relatively small impact on the estimate of the material entropy production. The approach presented here seems promising for testing climate models, for assessing the impact of changing their parametrizations and their resolution, as well as for investigating the atmosphere of exoplanets, because it allows for evaluating the error in the estimate of their thermodynamical properties due to the lack of high-resolution data. The findings on the impact of coarse graining on the thermodynamic fields on the estimate of the material entropy production deserve to be explored in a more general context, because they provide a way for understanding the relationship between forced fluctuations and dissipative processes in continuum systems.

Description: An ensemble prediction system (EPS) is devised for the extended range prediction (ERP) of monsoon intraseasonal oscillations (MISO) of Indian summer monsoon (ISM) using National Centers for Environmental Prediction Climate Forecast System model version 2 at T126 horizontal resolution. The EPS is formulated by generating 11 member ensembles through the perturbation of atmospheric initial conditions. The hindcast experiments were conducted at every 5-day interval for 45 days lead time starting from 16th May to 28th September during 2001–2012. The general simulation of ISM characteristics and the ERP skill of the proposed EPS at pentad mean scale are evaluated in the present study. Though the EPS underestimates both the mean and variability of ISM rainfall, it simulates the northward propagation of MISO reasonably well. It is found that the signal-to-noise ratio of the forecasted rainfall becomes unity by about 18 days. The potential predictability error of the forecasted rainfall saturates by about 25 days. Though useful deterministic forecasts could be generated up to 2nd pentad lead, significant correlations are found even up to 4th pentad lead. The skill in predicting large-scale MISO, which is assessed by comparing the predicted and observed MISO indices, is found to be ~17 days. It is noted that the prediction skill of actual rainfall is closely related to the prediction of large-scale MISO amplitude as well as the initial conditions related to the different phases of MISO. An analysis of categorical prediction skills reveals that break is more skillfully predicted, followed by active and then normal. The categorical probability skill scores suggest that useful probabilistic forecasts could be generated even up to 4th pentad lead.

Description: A May–July precipitation nested reconstruction for the period AD 1415–2010 was developed from multi-century tree-ring records of Pinus nigra , Pinus brutia , and Cedrus brevifolia for Cyprus. Calibration and verification statistics for the period 1917–2010 show a good level of skill, and split-sample validation over 1917–2010 supports temporal stability of the tree-ring signal for precipitation. Smoothed annual time series of reconstructed precipitation and a tally of drought events in a moving time window indicate that the calibration period is not representative of the full range of drought variability. While convective precipitation in the warm season may be driven strongly by local factors, composite maps of geopotential height anomaly for dry years and wet years support large-scale atmospheric-flow influence related to height anomalies over the broader region of northeast Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Emerging positive trend in reconstruction residuals may be an early sign of exacerbation of drought stress on trees by recent warming in May–July. Future warming expected from increases in greenhouse gases poses a threat to forest resources in Cyprus and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

Description: Using pentad rainfall data we demonstrate the benefits of using accumulated rainfall and fractional accumulated rainfall for the evaluation of the annual cycle of rainfall over various monsoon domains. Our approach circumvents issues related to using threshold-based analysis techniques for investigating the life-cycle of monsoon rainfall. In the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project-5 models we find systematic errors in the phase of the annual cycle of rainfall. The models are delayed in the onset of summer rainfall over India, the Gulf of Guinea, and the South American Monsoon, with early onset prevalent for the Sahel and the North American Monsoon. This, in combination with the rapid fractional accumulation rate, impacts the ability of the models to simulate the fractional accumulation observed during summer. The rapid fractional accumulation rate and the time at which the accumulation begins are metrics that indicate how well the models concentrate the monsoon rainfall over the peak rainfall season, and the extent to which there is a phase error in the annual cycle. The lack of consistency in the phase error across all domains suggests that a “global” approach to the study of monsoons may not be sufficient to rectify the regional differences. Rather, regional process studies are necessary for diagnosing the underlying causes of the regionally-specific systematic model biases over the different monsoon domains. Despite the afore-mentioned biases, most models simulate well the interannual variability in the date of monsoon onset, the exceptions being models with the most pronounced dry biases. Two methods for estimating monsoon duration are presented, one of which includes nonlinear aspects of the fractional accumulation. The summer fractional accumulation of rainfall provides an objective way to estimate the extent of the monsoon domain, even in models with substantial dry biases for which monsoon is not defined using threshold-based techniques.

Description: Given the coarse resolution of global climate models, downscaling techniques are often needed to generate finer scale projections of variables affected by local-scale processes such as precipitation. However, classical statistical downscaling experiments for future climate rely on the time-invariance assumption as one cannot know the true change in the variable of interest, nor validate the models with data not yet observed. Our experimental setup involves using the Canadian regional climate model (CRCM) outputs as pseudo-observations to estimate model performance in the context of future climate projections by replacing historical and future observations with model simulations from the CRCM, nested within the domain of the Canadian global climate model (CGCM). In particular, we evaluated statistically downscaled daily precipitation time series in terms of the Peirce skill score, mean absolute errors, and climate indices. Specifically, we used a variety of linear and nonlinear methods such as artificial neural networks (ANN), decision trees and ensembles, multiple linear regression, and k -nearest neighbors to generate present and future daily precipitation occurrences and amounts. We obtained the predictors from the CGCM 3.1 20C3M (1971–2000) and A2 (2041–2070) simulations, and precipitation outputs from the CRCM 4.2 (forced with the CGCM 3.1 boundary conditions) as predictands. Overall, ANN models and tree ensembles outscored the linear models and simple nonlinear models in terms of precipitation occurrences, without performance deteriorating in future climate. In contrast, for the precipitation amounts and related climate indices, the performance of downscaling models deteriorated in future climate.

Description: The interpretation of stable isotopes in speleothems in terms of past temperature variability or precipitation rates requires a comprehensive understanding of the climatic factors and processes that influence the δ 18 O signal in the way through the atmosphere to the cave, where carbonate precipitates acquiring its final isotopic composition. This study presents for the first time in the Iberia Peninsula an integrated analysis of the isotopic composition of rainfall (δ 18 O p ) during 2010–2012 years and, through a detailed monitoring survey, the transference of the primary isotopic signal throughout the soil and epikarst into the Molinos cave (Teruel, NE Spain). Both air temperature and amount of precipitation have an important effect on δ 18 O p values, clearly imprinting a seasonal variability modulated by an amount effect when rainfall events are more frequent or intense. Air mass history and atmospheric circulation influences are considered through the study of weather types, synoptic-scale climate patterns and large-scale atmospheric circulation indexes (North Atlantic Oscillation and Western Mediterranean Oscillation) revealing a dominant source effect on δ 18 O p values in this region where tropical North Atlantic and Western Mediterranean are the two moisture source regions. A delay of 2–3 months occurs between the dripwater oxygen isotopic composition (δ 18 O d ) respect to δ 18 O p values as a consequence of large residence time in the epikarst. Limited calcite precipitates are found from winter to spring when δ 18 O d values are less negative and dripwater rates are constant. This study suggests that NE Iberian δ 18 O calcite proxy records are best interpreted as reflecting a combination of parameters, not just paleotemperature or paleorainfall and, if extending present-day situation towards the recent past, a biased signal towards winter values should be expected in Molinos speleothem records.

Description: Weather generators are increasingly becoming viable alternate models to assess the effects of future climate change scenarios on water resources systems. In this study, a new multisite, multivariate maximum entropy bootstrap weather generator (MEBWG) is proposed for generating daily weather variables, which has the ability to mimic both, spatial and temporal dependence structure in addition to other historical statistics. The maximum entropy bootstrap (MEB) involves two main steps: (1) random sampling from the empirical cumulative distribution function with endpoints selected to allow limited extrapolation and (2) reordering of the random series to respect the rank ordering of the original time series (temporal dependence structure). To capture the multi-collinear structure between the weather variables and between the sites, we combine orthogonal linear transformation with MEB. Daily weather data, which include precipitation, maximum temperature and minimum temperature from 27 years of record from the Upper Thames River Basin in Ontario, Canada, are used to analyze the ability of MEBWG based weather generator. Results indicate that the statistics from the synthetic replicates were not significantly different from the observed data and the model is able to preserve the 27 CLIMDEX indices very well. The MEBWG model shows better performance in terms of extrapolation and computational efficiency when compared to multisite, multivariate K-nearest neighbour model.

Description: Idealized climate change experiments using fixed sea-surface temperature are investigated to determine whether zonally symmetric aquaplanet configurations are useful for understanding climate feedbacks in more realistic configurations. The aquaplanets capture many of the robust responses of the large-scale circulation and hydrologic cycle to both warming the sea-surface temperature and quadrupling atmospheric CO 2 . The cloud response to both perturbations varies across models in both Earth-like and aquaplanet configurations, and this spread arises primarily from regions of large-scale subsidence. Most models produce a consistent cloud change across the subsidence regimes, and the feedback in trade-wind cumulus regions dominates the tropical response. It is shown that these trade-wind regions have similar cloud feedback in Earth-like and aquaplanet warming experiments. The tropical average cloud feedback of the Earth-like experiment is captured by five of eight aquaplanets, and the three outliers are investigated to understand the discrepancy. In two models, the discrepancy is due to warming induced dissipation of stratocumulus decks in the Earth-like configuration which are not represented in the aquaplanet. One model shows a circulation response in the aquaplanet experiment accompanied by a cloud response that differs from the Earth-like configuration. Quadrupling atmospheric CO 2 in aquaplanets produces slightly greater adjusted forcing than in Earth-like configurations, showing that land-surface effects dampen the adjusted forcing. The analysis demonstrates how aquaplanets, as part of a model hierarchy, help elucidate robust aspects of climate change and develop understanding of the processes underlying them.

Description: Australian rainfall is strongly influenced by El Niño-southern oscillation (ENSO). The relationship between ENSO and rainfall in eastern Australia is non-linear; the magnitude of La Niña events has a greater effect on rainfall than does the magnitude of El Niño events, and the cause of the non-linearity is unclear from previous work. The twentieth century reanalysis succeeds in capturing the asymmetric ENSO-rainfall relationship. In the reanalysis the asymmetry is strongly related to moisture availability in the south-west Pacific whereas wind flow is of less importance. Some global climate models (GCMs) in the coupled model intercomparison project (CMIP5) archive capture the asymmetric nature of the ENSO-rainfall relationship whilst others do not. Differences in thermodynamic processes and their relationships with ENSO are the primary cause of variability in model performance. Analysis of an atmosphere-only run of a GCM which fails to capture the non-linear ENSO-rainfall relationship is also conducted. The atmospheric run forced by observed sea surface temperatures shows no significant improvement in the ENSO-rainfall relationship over the corresponding coupled model run in the CMIP5 archive. This result suggests that some models are failing to capture the atmospheric teleconnection between the tropical Pacific and Australia, and both this and a realistic representation of oceanic ENSO characteristics are required for coupled models to accurately capture the ENSO-rainfall teleconnection. These findings have implications for the study of rainfall projections in the region.

Description: Simultaneous mooring arrays were maintained along the path of the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) at three longitudes (23°W, 10°W, and 0°E), from October 2007 to June 2011, as part of the CLIVAR Tropical Atlantic Climate Experiment. The measurements allow for the first time a description of the seasonal cycle and interannual variability of the EUC across the Atlantic basin. The mean transport of the EUC at 23°W is 14.3 ± 0.6 Sv, decreasing to 12.1 ± 0.9 and 9.4 ± 0.6 Sv at 10°W and 0°E, respectively. The EUC shows a changing seasonal cycle across the basin: at 23°W, the strongest EUC transport occurs in boreal fall in association with maximum easterly wind stress, at 10°W the EUC transport shows a semiannual cycle with a maximum in boreal spring and fall, while at 0°E the EUC has a single spring maximum. At all locations the EUC core exhibits a similar seasonal vertical migration, with shallowest core depths occurring in boreal spring and deepest core depths in boreal fall. The maximum core intensity occurs in boreal spring all across the basin, when the EUC is shallow, during the annual wind relaxation. The weakest EUC core intensity occurs during the boreal summer cold tongue phase, especially in the eastern part of the basin. At both 23°W and 10°W, a deep extension of the EUC occurs in boreal summer, which increases the transport in the lower thermocline and partially offsets the weaker upper EUC transport during boreal summer. No clear linkage could be established between the interannual variability of the EUC in the eastern part of the basin and the intensity of the summer cold tongue, despite evidence for such a linkage in the western part of the basin.

Description: The interdecadal change in seasonal predictability and numerical models’ seasonal forecast skill in the Northern Hemisphere are examined using both observations and the seasonal hindcast from six coupled atmosphere-ocean climate models from the 21 period of 1960–1980 (P1) to that of 1981–2001 (P2). It is shown that the one-month lead seasonal forecast skill of the six models’ multi-model ensemble is significantly increased from P1 to P2 for all four seasons. We identify four possible reasons accounting for the interdecadal change of the seasonal forecast skill. Firstly, the numerical model’s ability to simulate the mean state, the time variability and the spatial structures of the sea surface temperature and precipitation over the tropical Pacific is improved in P2 compared to P1. Secondly, an examination of the potential predictability of the atmosphere, estimated by the ratio of the total variance to the variance due to the internal dynamics of the model atmosphere, reveals that the atmospheric potential predictability is significantly increased after 1980s which is mainly due to an increased influence of El Niño-Southern Oscillation signal over the North Pacific and North American regions. Thirdly, the long-term climate trends in the atmosphere are found to contribute, to some extent, to the increased seasonal forecast skill especially over the Eurasian regions. Finally, the improved ocean observations in P2 may provide better initial conditions for the coupled models’ seasonal forecast.

Description: A new method of estimating the decay time, mean period and forcing statistics of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been found. It uses a two-dimensional stochastically forced damped linear oscillator model with the model parameters estimated from a Principal Oscillation Pattern (POP) analysis and associated observed power spectra. It makes use of extended observational time series of 150 years of sea surface temperature (SST) and sea level pressure (SLP) as well as climate model output. This approach is motivated by clear physical relationships that SST and SLP POP patterns have to the ENSO cycle, as well as to each other, indicating that they represent actual physical modes of the climate system. Moreover, the leading POP mode accounts for 20–50 % of the variance on interannual time scales. The POP real part is highly correlated with several Niño indices near zero lag while the imaginary part exhibits a 6–9 month lead time and thus is a precursor. The observed POP power spectra show markedly different behavior for the peak and precursor, the former having more power at ENSO frequencies and the latter dominating at low frequencies. The results realistically suggest a period of oscillation of 4–6 years and a decay time of 8 months, which corresponds to the practical ENSO prediction limit. A fundamental finding of this approach is that the difference between the observed peak and precursor spectra at low frequencies can be related to the forcing statistics using the simple model, as well as to the difference between patterns of decadal and interannual variability in the Pacific.

Description: Using a statistical relationship between simulated sea surface temperature and Atlantic hurricane activity, we estimate the skill of a CMIP5 multi-model ensemble at predicting multi-annual level of Atlantic hurricane activity. The series of yearly-initialized hindcasts show positive skill compared to simpler forecasts such as persistence and climatology as well as non-initialized forecasts and return anomaly correlation coefficients of ∼0.6 and ∼0.8 for five and nine year forecasts, respectively. Some skill is shown to remain in the later years and making use of those later years to create a lagged-ensemble yields, for individual models, results that approach that obtained by the multi-model ensemble. Some of the skill is shown to come from persisting rather than predicting the climate shift that occur in 1994–1995. After accounting for that shift, the anomaly correlation coefficient for five-year forecasts is estimated to drop to 0.4, but remains statistically significant up to lead years 3–7. Most of the skill is shown to come from the ability of the forecast systems at capturing change in Atlantic sea surface temperature, although the failure of most systems at reproducing the observed slow down in warming over the tropics in recent years leads to an underestimation of hurricane activity in the later period.

Description: It has been pointed out that climatological-mean precipitation-evaporation difference ( P – E ) should increase under global warming mainly through the increasing saturation level of moisture. This study focuses on evaporation changes under global warming and their dependency on the direct warming effect, on the basis of future projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Over most of the tropical, subtropical and midlatitude regions, the direct contribution from surface temperature increase is found to dominate the projected increase in evaporation. This contribution is nevertheless offset partially, especially over the oceans, by contributions from weakening surface winds and increasing near-surface relative humidity. Greater warming of surface air than of the sea surface also acts to reduce surface evaporation, by reducing both the exchange coefficient and humidity contrast at the surface. Though generally of secondary importance, this contribution is the dominant factor over the subpolar oceans. Over the polar oceans, the effect of sea-ice retreat dominantly contributes to the evaporation increase in winter, whereas the reduced exchange coefficient and surface humidity contrast coupled with the sea-ice retreat account for most of the response during summertime. Over the continents, changes in the surface exchange coefficient, reflecting changes in soil moisture and vegetation among other factors, are important to modulate the direct effects of the warming and the generally reduced surface air relative humidity.

Description: In 36 climate change simulations associated with phases 3 and 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3 and CMIP5), changes in marine low cloud cover (LCC) exhibit a large spread, and may be either positive or negative. Here we develop a heuristic model to understand the source of the spread. The model’s premise is that simulated LCC changes can be interpreted as a linear combination of contributions from factors shaping the clouds’ large-scale environment. We focus primarily on two factors—the strength of the inversion capping the atmospheric boundary layer (measured by the estimated inversion strength, EIS) and sea surface temperature (SST). For a given global model, the respective contributions of EIS and SST are computed. This is done by multiplying (1) the current-climate’s sensitivity of LCC to EIS or SST variations, by (2) the climate-change signal in EIS or SST. The remaining LCC changes are then attributed to changes in greenhouse gas and aerosol concentrations, and other environmental factors. The heuristic model is remarkably skillful. Its SST term dominates, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the intermodel variance of LCC changes in CMIP3 models, and about half in CMIP5 models. Of the two factors governing the SST term (the SST increase and the sensitivity of LCC to SST perturbations), the SST sensitivity drives the spread in the SST term and hence the spread in the overall LCC changes. This sensitivity varies a great deal from model to model and is strongly linked to the types of cloud and boundary layer parameterizations used in the models. EIS and SST sensitivities are also estimated using observational cloud and meteorological data. The observed sensitivities are generally consistent with the majority of models as well as expectations from prior research. Based on the observed sensitivities and the relative magnitudes of simulated EIS and SST changes (which we argue are also physically reasonable), the heuristic model predicts LCC will decrease over the 21st-century. However, to place a strong constraint, for example on the magnitude of the LCC decrease, will require longer observational records and a careful assessment of other environmental factors producing LCC changes. Meanwhile, addressing biases in simulated EIS and SST sensitivities will clearly be an important step towards reducing intermodel spread in simulated LCC changes.

Description: The tropical cyclone (TC) power dissipation index (PDI) in May over the western North Pacific (WNP) region shows a remarkable increase from the pre-1999 years (1979–1999) to the post-1999 years (2000–2011). Both increased TC numbers and enhanced TC intensity contributed to the change in the PDI. The averaged TC number in May increased from 1.05 per year in the pre-1999 years to 1.75 per year in the post-1999 years. In particular, the number of intense typhoon goes up from 0.14 per year to 0.83 per year, implying a sharp increase of TC intensity. Examination of the large scale background circulation in May shows that the epochal increase of TC number is caused by a significant increase of the genesis potential index (GPI), which has increased by about 33 % from the first (1979–1998) to the second (1999–2011) epoch over the TC genesis region (110°E–160°E, 5°N–20°N). The higher TC intensity is related to the increased maximum potential intensity and reduced TC ambient vertical wind shear in the second epoch. These decadal changes in background conditions over the WNP are the results of the enhanced summer monsoon in May over the both South Asia and South China Sea.

Description: A hypothesized low-frequency climate signal propagating across the Northern Hemisphere through a network of synchronized climate indices was identified in previous analyses of instrumental and proxy data. The tempo of signal propagation is rationalized in terms of the multidecadal component of Atlantic Ocean variability—the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Through multivariate statistical analysis of an expanded database, we further investigate this hypothesized signal to elucidate propagation dynamics. The Eurasian Arctic Shelf-Sea Region, where sea ice is uniquely exposed to open ocean in the Northern Hemisphere, emerges as a strong contender for generating and sustaining propagation of the hemispheric signal. Ocean-ice-atmosphere coupling spawns a sequence of positive and negative feedbacks that convey persistence and quasi-oscillatory features to the signal. Further stabilizing the system are anomalies of co-varying Pacific-centered atmospheric circulations. Indirectly related to dynamics in the Eurasian Arctic, these anomalies appear to negatively feed back onto the Atlantic‘s freshwater balance. Earth’s rotational rate and other proxies encode traces of this signal as it makes its way across the Northern Hemisphere.

Description: The Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the primary mode of tropical intraseasonal climate variability and has significant modulation of global climate variations and attendant societal impacts. Advancing prediction of the MJO using state of the art observational data and modeling systems is thus a necessary goal for improving global intraseasonal climate prediction. MJO prediction is assessed in the NOAA Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2) based on its hindcasts initialized daily for 1999–2010. The analysis focuses on MJO indices taken as the principal components of the two leading EOFs of combined 15°S–15°N average of 200-hPa zonal wind, 850-hPa zonal wind and outgoing longwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere. The CFSv2 has useful MJO prediction skill out to 20 days at which the bivariate anomaly correlation coefficient (ACC) drops to 0.5 and root-mean-square error (RMSE) increases to the level of the prediction with climatology. The prediction skill also shows a seasonal variation with the lowest ACC during the boreal summer and highest ACC during boreal winter. The prediction skills are evaluated according to the target as well as initial phases. Within the lead time of 10 days the ACC is generally greater than 0.8 and RMSE is less than 1 for all initial and target phases. At longer lead time, the model shows lower skills for predicting enhanced convection over the Maritime Continent and from the eastern Pacific to western Indian Ocean. The prediction skills are relatively higher for target phases when enhanced convection is in the central Indian Ocean and the central Pacific. While the MJO prediction skills are improved in CFSv2 compared to its previous version, systematic errors still exist in the CFSv2 in the maintenance and propagation of the MJO including (1) the MJO amplitude in the CFSv2 drops dramatically at the beginning of the prediction and remains weaker than the observed during the target period and (2) the propagation in the CFSv2 is too slow. Reducing these errors will be necessary for further improvement of the MJO prediction.

Description: The question of why, in the annual-mean, the northern hemisphere (NH) is warmer than the southern hemisphere (SH) is addressed, revisiting an 1870 paper by James Croll. We first show that ocean is warmer than land in general which, acting alone, would make the SH, with greater ocean fraction, warmer. Croll was aware of this and thought it was caused by greater specific humidity and greenhouse trapping over ocean than over land. However, for any given temperature, it is shown that greenhouse trapping is actually greater over land. Instead, oceans are warmer than land because of the smaller surface albedo. However, hemispheric differences in planetary albedo are negligible because the impact of differences in land-sea fraction are offset by the SH ocean and land reflecting more than their NH counterparts. In the absence of a role for albedo differences it is shown that, in agreement with Croll, northward cross-equatorial ocean heat transport (X-OHT) is critical for the warmer NH. This is examined in a simple box model based on the energy budget of each hemisphere. The hemispheric difference forced by X-OHT is enhanced by the positive water vapor-greenhouse feedback, and is partly compensated by the southward atmospheric energy transport. Due to uncertainties in the ocean data, a range of X-OHT is considered. A X-OHT of larger than 0.5 PW is needed to explain the warmer NH solely by X-OHT. For smaller X-OHT, a larger basic state greenhouse trapping in the NH, conceived as imposed by continental geometry, needs to be imposed. Numerical experiments with a GCM coupled to a slab ocean provide evidence that X-OHT is fundamentally important in determining the hemispheric differences in temperature. Therefore, despite some modifications to his theory, analysis of modern data confirms Croll’s 140-year-old theory that the warmer NH is partly because of northward X-OHT.

Description: Recent studies have highlighted the nonlinear rainfall response to El Niño sea surface temperature (SST) events in the Indo-Pacific region and how this response might change over coming decades. Here we investigate the response to La Niña SST anomalies with and without global warming by performing idealised SST-forced experiments with an atmospheric general circulation model. The La Niña SST anomaly is multiplied by a factor $1 \le \alpha \le 4$ and added to climatological SSTs. Similar experiments using El Niño SST anomalies were previously performed, in which large nonlinearities in the precipitation response were evident. We find that: (i) Under current climatic conditions, as $\alpha$ increases, the precipitation responds in three ways: the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) dries and moves poleward, the maximum precipitation along the equator moves west, and the South Pacific convergence zone (SPCZ) narrows, intensifies, and elongates. For weak ( $\alpha = 1$ ) La Niña events, the precipitation anomalies approximately mirror those from the El Niño events along the ITCZ and SPCZ, though there are some marked differences in the central-eastern Pacific. For stronger La Niña events ( $\alpha 〉 1$ ), precipitation responds nonlinearly to SST anomalies, though the nonlinearities are smaller and differ spatially from the nonlinearities in the El Niño runs. (ii) The addition of a global warming SST pattern increases rainfall in the western Pacific and SPCZ, enhances the narrowing of the SPCZ, and increases the nonlinear response in the western Pacific. However, large La Niña events reduce the impact of global warming along the central-eastern equatorial Pacific as the global warming and La Niña SST anomalies have opposite signs in that region. (iii) The response to La Niña SST anomalies is driven primarily by changes in the atmospheric circulation, whereas the response to the global warming SST pattern is mainly driven by increases in atmospheric moisture. (iv) Large changes in La Niña-driven rainfall anomalies can occur in response to global warming, even if the La Nina SST anomalies relative to the warmer background state are completely unchanged.

Description: This study proposes an overview of the main synoptic, medium-range and intraseasonal modes of convection and precipitation in northern spring (March–June 1979–2010) over West and Central Africa, and to understand their atmospheric dynamics. It is based on daily National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration outgoing longwave radiation and Cloud Archive User Service Tb convection data, daily TRMM and Global Precipitation Climatology Project rainfall products and daily ERA-Interim reanalysis atmospheric fields. It is first shown that mesoscale convective systems can be modulated in terms of occurrences number and intensity at such time scales. Based on empirical orthogonal function analyses on the 2–90-day filtered data it is shown that the main mode of convective and rainfall variability is located along the Guinean coast with a moderate to weak extension over Central Africa. Corresponding regressed deseasonalised atmospheric fields highlight an eastward propagation of patterns consistent with convectively coupled equatorial Kelvin wave dynamics. Then a singular spectrum analysis combined with a Hierarchical Ascendant Classification enable to define objectively the main spectral bands of variability within the 2–90-day band, and highlight three main bands, 2–8-, 8–22- and 20–90-day. Within these three bands, space–time spectral decomposition is used to identify the relative impacts of convectively coupled equatorial Kelvin, Rossby and inertia–gravity waves, as well as Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) signal. It confirms that eastward propagating signals (convectively coupled equatorial Kelvin wave and MJO) are highly dominant in these convection and precipitation variability modes over the Guinean coast during northern spring. So, while rain-producing individual systems are moving westward, their activity are highly modulated by sub-regional and regional scales envelops moving to the east. This is a burning issue for operational forecasting centers to be able to monitor and predict such eastward propagating envelops of convective activity.

Description: Detailed spatiotemporal structures for the submonthly-scale (7–25 days) intraseasonal oscillation (ISO) in summer monsoon rainfall and atmospheric circulation were investigated in South Asia using high-quality rainfall and reanalysis datasets. The Meghalaya–Bangladesh–coast of the western Myanmar (MBWM) region is the predominant area of submonthly-scale ISO in the Asian monsoon regions. The distinct rainfall ISO is caused by a remarkable alternation of low-level zonal wind between westerly and easterly flows around the Gangetic Plain on the same timescales. In the active ISO phase of the MBWM, a strong low-level westerly/southwesterly flows around the plain and a center of cyclonic vorticity appears over Bangladesh. Hence, a local southerly flows toward the Meghalaya Plateau and there is strong southwesterly flow towards the coast along southeastern Bangladesh and western Myanmar, resulting in an increase in orographic rainfall. Rainfall also increases over the lowland area of the MBWM due to the low-level convergence in the boundary layer under the strong cyclonic circulation. The submonthly-scale low-level wind fluctuation around the MBWM is caused by a westward moving n  = 1 equatorial Rossby (ER) wave. When the anticyclonic (cyclonic) anomaly related to the ER wave approaches the Bay of Bengal from the western Pacific, humid westerly/southwesterly (easterly/southeasterly) flows enhance around the Gangetic Plain on the northern fringe of the anticyclone (cyclone) and in turn promote (reduce) rainfall in the MBWM. Simultaneously, robust circulation signals are observed over the mid-latitudes. In the active phase, cyclonic anomalies appear over and around the TP, having barotropic vertical structure and also contributing to the enhancement of low-level westerly flow around the Gangetic Plain. In the upper troposphere, an anticyclonic anomaly is also observed upstream of the cyclonic anomaly over the TP, having wavetrain structure. The mid-latitude circulation around the TP likely helps to induce the distinct ISO there in conjunction with the equatorial waves. Thus, the distinct ISO in the MBWM is strongly enhanced locally (~500 km) by the terrain features, although the atmospheric circulation causing the ISO has a horizontal scale of ~6,000 km or more, extending across the whole Asian monsoon system from the tropics to mid-latitudes.

Description: The present study focuses on identifying the main atmospheric circulation characteristics associated with aerosol episodes (AEs) over Kanpur, India during the period 2001–2010. In this respect, mean sea level pressure (MSLP) and geopotential height of 700 hPa (Z700) data obtained from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Project were used along with daily Terra-MODIS AOD 550 data. The analysis identifies 277 AEs [AOD 500  〉  $ \overline{AOD} $ 500  + 1STDEV (standard deviation)] over Kanpur corresponding to 13.2 % of the available AERONET dataset, which are seasonally distributed as 12.5, 9.1, 14.7 and 18.6 % for winter (Dec–Feb), pre-monsoon (Mar–May), monsoon (Jun–Sep) and post-monsoon (Oct–Nov), respectively. The post-monsoon and winter AEs are mostly related to anthropogenic emissions, in contrast to pre-monsoon and monsoon episodes when a significant component of dust is found. The multivariate statistical methods Factor and Cluster Analysis are applied on the dataset of the AEs days’ Z700 patterns over south Asia, to group them into discrete clusters. Six clusters are identified and for each of them the composite means for MSLP and Z700 as well as their anomalies from the mean 1981–2010 climatology are studied. Furthermore, the spatial distribution of Terra-MODIS AOD 550 over Indian sub-continent is examined to identify aerosol hot-spot areas for each cluster, while the SPRINTARS model simulations reveal incapability in reproducing the large anthropogenic AOD, suggesting need of further improvement in model emission inventories. This work is the first performed over India aiming to analyze and group the atmospheric circulation patterns associated with AEs over Indo-Gangetic Plains and to explore the influence of meteorology on the accumulation of aerosols.

Description: The future rate of Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) deglaciation and the future contribution of GrIS deglaciation to sea level rise will depend critically on the magnitude of northern hemispheric polar amplification and global equilibrium climate sensitivity. Here, these relationships are analyzed using an ensemble of multi-century coupled ice-sheet/climate model simulations seeded with observationally-constrained initial conditions and then integrated forward under tripled preindustrial CO 2 . Polar amplifications and climate sensitivities were varied between ensemble members in order to bracket current uncertainty in polar amplification and climate sensitivity. A large inter-ensemble spread in mean GrIS air temperature, albedo and surface mass balance trends stemming from this uncertainty resulted in GrIS ice volume loss ranging from 5 to 40 % of the original ice volume after 500 years. The large dependence of GrIS deglaciation on polar amplification and climate sensitivity that we find indicates that the representation of these processes in climate models will exert a strong control on any simulated predictions of multi-century GrIS evolution. Efforts to reduce polar amplification and equilibrium climate sensitivity uncertainty will therefore play a critical role in constraining projections of GrIS deglaciation and sea level rise in a future high-CO 2 world.

Description: We present a diagnostic analysis of the marine low cloud climatology simulated by two state-of-the-art coupled atmosphere–ocean models: the National Center for Atmospheric Research community earth system model version 1 (CESM1) and the National Center for Environmental Predictions global forecasting system-modular ocean model version 4 (GFS-MOM4) coupled model. In the CESM1, the coastal stratocumulus (Sc)-topped planetary boundary layers (PBLs) in the subtropical Eastern Pacific are well-simulated but the climatological transition from Sc to shallow cumulus (Cu) is too abrupt and occurs too close to the coast. By contrast, in the GFS-MOM4 the coastal Sc amount and PBL depth are severely underestimated while the transition from Sc to shallow Cu is “delayed” and offshore Sc cover is too extensive in the subtropical Eastern Pacific. We discuss the possible connections between these differences in the simulations and differences in the parameterizations of shallow convection and boundary layer turbulence in the two models.

Description: The use of high resolution atmosphere–ocean coupled regional climate models to study possible future climate changes in the Mediterranean Sea requires an accurate simulation of the atmospheric component of the water budget (i.e., evaporation, precipitation and runoff). A specific configuration of the version 3.1 of the weather research and forecasting (WRF) regional climate model was shown to systematically overestimate the Mediterranean Sea water budget mainly due to an excess of evaporation (~1,450 mm yr −1 ) compared with observed estimations (~1,150 mm yr −1 ). In this article, a 70-member multi-physics ensemble is used to try to understand the relative importance of various sub-grid scale processes in the Mediterranean Sea water budget and to evaluate its representation by comparing simulated results with observed-based estimates. The physics ensemble was constructed by performing 70 1-year long simulations using version 3.3 of the WRF model by combining six cumulus, four surface/planetary boundary layer and three radiation schemes. Results show that evaporation variability across the multi-physics ensemble (∼10 % of the mean evaporation) is dominated by the choice of the surface layer scheme that explains more than ∼70 % of the total variance and that the overestimation of evaporation in WRF simulations is generally related with an overestimation of surface exchange coefficients due to too large values of the surface roughness parameter and/or the simulation of too unstable surface conditions. Although the influence of radiation schemes on evaporation variability is small (∼13 % of the total variance), radiation schemes strongly influence exchange coefficients and vertical humidity gradients near the surface due to modifications of temperature lapse rates. The precipitation variability across the physics ensemble (∼35 % of the mean precipitation) is dominated by the choice of both cumulus (∼55 % of the total variance) and planetary boundary layer (∼32 % of the total variance) schemes with a strong regional dependence. Most members of the ensemble underestimate total precipitation amounts with biases as large as 250 mm yr −1 over the whole Mediterranean Sea compared with ERA Interim reanalysis mainly due to an underestimation of the number of wet days. The larger number of dry days in simulations is associated with a deficit in the activation of cumulus schemes. Both radiation and planetary boundary layer schemes influence precipitation through modifications on the available water vapor in the boundary layer generally tied with changes in evaporation.

Description: This study investigates summer rainfall variability in the South China Sea (SCS) region and the roles of remote sea surface temperature (SST) forcing in the tropical Indian and Pacific Ocean regions. The SCS summer rainfall displays a positive and negative relationship with simultaneous SST in the equatorial central Pacific (ECP) and the North Indian Ocean (NIO), respectively. Positive ECP SST anomalies induce an anomalous low-level cyclone over the SCS-western North Pacific as a Rossby-wave type response, leading to above-normal precipitation over northern SCS. Negative NIO SST anomalies contribute to anomalous cyclonic winds over the western North Pacific by an anomalous east–west vertical circulation north of the equator, favoring more rainfall over northern SCS. These NIO SST anomalies are closely related to preceding La Niña and El Niño events through the “atmospheric bridge”. Thus, the NIO SST anomalies serve as a medium for an indirect impact of preceding ECP SST anomalies on the SCS summer rainfall variability. The ECP SST influence is identified to be dominant after 1990 and the NIO SST impact is relatively more important during 1980s. These Indo-Pacific SST effects are further investigated by conducting numerical experiments with an atmospheric general circulation model. The consistency between the numerical experiments and the observations enhances the credibility of the Indo-Pacific SST influence on the SCS summer rainfall variability.

Description: Selected characteristics of dry spells and associated trends over India during the 1951–2007 period is studied using two gridded datasets: the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Asian Precipitation-Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation of the water resources (APHRODITE) datasets. Two precipitation thresholds, 1 and 3 mm, are used to define a dry day (and therefore dry spells) in this study. Comparison of the spatial patterns of the dry spell characteristics (mean number of dry days, mean number of dry spells, mean and maximum duration of dry spells) for the annual and summer monsoon period obtained with both datasets agree overall, except for the northernmost part of India. The number of dry days obtained with APHRODITE is larger for this region compared to IMD, which is consistent with the smaller precipitation for the region in APHRODITE. These differences are also visible in the spatial patterns of mean and maximum dry spell durations. Analysis of field significance associated with trends, at the level of 34 predefined meteorological subdivisions over the mainland, suggests better agreement between the two datasets in positive trends associated with number of dry days for the annual and summer monsoon period, for both thresholds. Important differences between the two datasets are noted in the field significance associated with the negative trends. While negative trends in annual maximum duration of dry spells appear field significant for the desert regions according to both datasets, they are found field significant for two regions (Punjab and South Interior Karnataka) for the monsoon period for both datasets. This study, in addition to providing information on the spatial and temporal patterns associated with dry spell characteristics, also allows identification of regions and characteristics where the two datasets agree/disagree.

Description: The relationship between summer African easterly waves (AEWs) and daily rainfall is assessed in West Africa for 1998–2008 using various reanalyses, satellite-derived rainfall products, and a regional climate model (RCM) run at 90- and 30-km resolutions. 3–5 and 6–9 day AEWs are extracted by filtering daily 700 hPa meridional wind time series at 1°W and 11.5°N, and 1°W and 17.5°N, respectively. Both observed and simulated rainfall anomalies are of larger magnitude over West Africa during 3–5-d than 6–9-d AEWs. The RCM simulates larger rainfall rates in phase with the 3–5-d wave trough instead of ahead, unlike the observations, and overestimates the intensity and spatial coverage of rainfall associated with 6–9-d AEWs. The observed and simulated co-variability between 3–5-d (6–9-d) AEW activity and daily rainfall is strong (weak) and mostly located south (north) of 15°N. However, the RCM overestimates the spatial coverage of the AEW–rainfall relationship in the longitudinal (latitudinal) direction in the case of 3–5-d (6–9-d) AEWs. Observed and simulated daily intense rainfall events, extracted using a percentile threshold approach, are mostly located south of 15°N during summer. The observed relationship between their frequency of occurrence and active 3–5-d AEWs is maximal west of 8°E, while extends up to southern Chad in both RCM simulations. Their magnitude is also largely overestimated by the RCM, indicating an exaggerated coupling between the wave activity and the convection. Finally, observed and simulated 3–5-d AEWs establish the most favorable synoptic conditions for the development of intense rainfall events over West Africa.

Description: Reasonably modeling the magnitude, south–north gradient and seasonal propagation of precipitation associated with the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) is a challenging task in the climate community. In this study we calibrate five key parameters in the Kain–Fritsch convection scheme in the WRF model using an efficient importance-sampling algorithm to improve the EASM simulation. We also examine the impacts of the improved EASM precipitation on other physical process. Our results suggest similar model sensitivity and values of optimized parameters across years with different EASM intensities. By applying the optimal parameters, the simulated precipitation and surface energy features are generally improved. The parameters related to downdraft, entrainment coefficients and CAPE consumption time (CCT) can most sensitively affect the precipitation and atmospheric features. Larger downdraft coefficient or CCT decrease the heavy rainfall frequency, while larger entrainment coefficient delays the convection development but build up more potential for heavy rainfall events, causing a possible northward shift of rainfall distribution. The CCT is the most sensitive parameter over wet region and the downdraft parameter plays more important roles over drier northern region. Long-term simulations confirm that by using the optimized parameters the precipitation distributions are better simulated in both weak and strong EASM years. Due to more reasonable simulated precipitation condensational heating, the monsoon circulations are also improved. By using the optimized parameters the biases in the retreating (beginning) of Mei-yu (northern China rainfall) simulated by the standard WRF model are evidently reduced and the seasonal and sub-seasonal variations of the monsoon precipitation are remarkably improved.

Description: Soil moisture exhibits outstanding memory characteristics and plays a key role within the climate system. Especially through its impacts on the evapotranspiration of soils and plants, it may influence the land energy balance and therefore surface temperature. These attributes make soil moisture an important variable in the context of weather and climate forecasting. In this study we investigate the value of (initial) soil moisture information for sub-seasonal temperature forecasts. For this purpose we employ a simple water balance model to infer soil moisture from streamflow observations in 400 catchments across Europe. Running this model with forecasted atmospheric forcing, we derive soil moisture forecasts, which we then translate into temperature forecasts using simple linear relationships. The resulting temperature forecasts show skill beyond climatology up to 2 weeks in most of the considered catchments. Even if forecasting skills are rather small at longer lead times with significant skill only in some catchments at lead times of 3 and 4 weeks, this soil moisture-based approach shows local improvements compared to the monthly European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) temperature forecasts at these lead times. For both products (soil moisture-only forecast and ECMWF forecast), we find comparable or better forecast performance in the case of extreme events, especially at long lead times. Even though a product based on soil moisture information alone is not of practical relevance, our results indicate that soil moisture (memory) is a potentially valuable contributor to temperature forecast skill. Investigating the underlying soil moisture of the ECMWF forecasts we find good agreement with the simple model forecasts, especially at longer lead times. Analyzing the drivers of the temperature forecast skills we find that they are mainly controlled by the strengths of (1) the soil moisture-temperature coupling and (2) the soil moisture memory. We find a negative relationship between these controls that weakens the forecast skills, nevertheless there is a middle ground between both controls in several catchments, as shown by our results.

Description: This study presents the first multidecadal and coupled regional simulation of cyclonic activity in the South Pacific. The long-term integration of state-of the art models provides reliable statistics, missing in usual event studies, of air–sea coupling processes controlling tropical cyclone (TC) intensity. The coupling effect is analyzed through comparison of the coupled model with a companion forced experiment. Cyclogenesis patterns in the coupled model are closer to observations with reduced cyclogenesis in the Coral Sea. This provides novel evidence of air–sea coupling impacting not only intensity but also spatial cyclogenesis distribution. Storm-induced cooling and consequent negative feedback is stronger for regions of shallow mixed layers and thin or absent barrier layers as in the Coral Sea. The statistical effect of oceanic mesoscale eddies on TC intensity (crossing over them 20 % of the time) is also evidenced. Anticyclonic eddies provide an insulating effect against storm-induced upwelling and mixing and appear to reduce sea surface temperature (SST) cooling. Cyclonic eddies on the contrary tend to promote strong cooling, particularly through storm-induced upwelling. Air–sea coupling is shown to have a significant role on the intensification process but the sensitivity of TCs to SST cooling is nonlinear and generally lower than predicted by thermodynamic theories: about 15 rather than over 30 hPa °C −1 and only for strong cooling. The reason is that the cooling effect is not instantaneous but accumulated over time within the TC inner-core. These results thus contradict the classical evaporation-wind feedback process as being essential to intensification and rather emphasize the role of macro-scale dynamics.

Description: In this study, the climate mean, variability, and dominant patterns of the Northern Hemisphere wintertime mean 200 hPa geopotential height (Z200) in a CMIP and a set of AMIP simulations from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2) are analyzed and compared with the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis. For the climate mean, it is found that a component of the bias in stationary waves characterized with wave trains emanating from the tropics into both the hemispheres can be attributed to the precipitation deficit over the Maritime continent. The lack of latent heating associated with the precipitation deficit may have served as the forcing of the wave trains. For the variability of the seasonal mean, both the CMIP and AMIP successfully simulated the geographical locations of the major centers of action, but the simulated intensity was generally weaker than that in the reanalysis, particularly for the center over the Davis Strait-southern Greenland area. It is also noted that the simulated action center over Aleutian Islands was southeastward shifted to some extent. The shift was likely caused by the eastward extension of the Pacific jet. Differences also existed between the CMIP and the AMIP simulations, with the center of actions over the Aleutian Islands stronger in the AMIP and the center over the Davis Strait-southern Greenland area stronger in the CMIP simulation. In the mode analysis, the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnection pattern in each dataset was first removed from the data, and a rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) analysis was then applied to the residual. The purpose of this separation was to avoid possible mixing between the ENSO mode and those generated by the atmospheric internal dynamics. It was found that the simulated ENSO teleconnection patterns from both model runs well resembled that from the reanalysis, except for a small eastward shift. Based on the REOF modes of the residual data, six dominant modes of the reanalysis data had counterparts in each model simulation, though with different rankings in explained variance and some distortions in spatial structure. By evaluating the temporal coherency of the REOF modes between the reanalysis and the AMIP, it was found that the time series associated with the equatorially displaced North Atlantic Oscillation in the two datasets were significantly correlated, suggesting a potential predictability for this mode.

Description: The seasonal mean extra-tropical atmospheric response to El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is assessed in the historical and pre-industrial control CMIP5 simulations. This analysis considers two types of El Niño events, characterized by positive sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in either the central equatorial Pacific (CP) or eastern equatorial Pacific (EP), as well as EP and CP La Niña events, characterized by negative SST anomalies in the same two regions. Seasonal mean geopotential height anomalies in key regions typify the magnitude and structure of the disruption of the Walker circulation cell in the tropical Pacific, upper tropospheric ENSO teleconnections and the polar stratospheric response. In the CMIP5 ensembles, the magnitude of the Walker cell disruption is correlated with the strength of the mid-latitude responses in the upper troposphere i.e., the North Pacific and South Pacific lows strengthen during El Niño events. The simulated responses to El Niño and La Niña have opposite sign. The seasonal mean extra-tropical, upper tropospheric responses to EP and CP events are indistinguishable. The ENSO responses in the MERRA reanalysis lie within the model scatter of the historical simulations. Similar responses are simulated in the pre-industrial and historical CMIP5 simulations. Overall, there is a weak correlation between the strength of the tropical response to ENSO and the strength of the polar stratospheric response. ENSO-related polar stratospheric variability is best simulated in the “high-top” subset of models with a well-resolved stratosphere.

Description: The characteristics of multidecadal variability (MDV) in global land surface air temperature (SAT) are analyzed based on observations. The role of sea surface temperature (SST) variations in generating MDV in land SAT is assessed using atmospheric general circulation model simulations forced by observed SST. MDV in land SAT exhibits regional differences, with amplitude larger than 0.3 °C mainly over North America, East Asia, Northern Eurasia, Northern Africa and Greenland for the study period of 1902–2004. MDV can account for more than 30 % of long-term temperature variation during the last century in most regions, especially more than 50 % in parts of the above-mentioned regions. The SST-forced simulations reproduce the observed feature of zonal mean MDV in land SAT, though with weaker amplitude especially at the northern high-latitudes. Two types of MDV in land SAT, one of 60-year-timescale, mainly observed in the northern mid-high-latitude lands, and another of 20–30-year-timescale, mainly observed in the low-latitude lands, are also well reproduced. The SST-forced MDV accounts for more than 40 % amplitude of observed MDV in most regions. Except for some sporadically distributed regions in central Eurasia, South America and Western Australia, the SST-forced multidecadal variations are well in-phase with observations. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation signals are found dominant in MDV of both the observed and SST-forced land SAT, suggesting important roles of these oceanic oscillations in generating MDV in global land SAT.

Description: The termination of the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) in the eastern equatorial Atlantic during boreal summer and fall, and the fate of the associated saline water masses, are analyzed from in situ hydrological and currents data collected during 19 hydrographic cruises between 2000 and 2007, complemented by observations from Argo profiling floats and PIRATA moorings, and from a numerical simulation of the Tropical Atlantic Ocean for the period 1993–2007. An intense variability of the circulation and hydrological properties is evidenced from observations in the upper thermocline (24.5–26.2 isopycnal layer) between June and November. During early boreal summer, saline water masses are transported eastward in the upper thermocline to the African coast within the EUC, and recirculate westward on both sides of the EUC. In mid-boreal summer, the EUC weakens in the upper thermocline and the equatorial salinity maximum disappears due to intense mixing with the surface waters during the upwelling season. The extra-equatorial salinity maxima are also partially eroded during the boreal summer, with a slight poleward migration of the southern hemisphere maximum until late boreal summer. The upper EUC reappears in September, feeding again the eastern equatorial Atlantic with saline waters until boreal spring. During December–January, numerical results suggest a second seasonal weakening of the EUC in the Gulf of Guinea, with a partial erosion of the associated equatorial salinity maximum.

Description: In the 1960s North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SST) cooled rapidly. The magnitude of the cooling was largest in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre (SPG), and was coincident with a rapid freshening of the SPG. Here we analyze hindcasts of the 1960s North Atlantic cooling made with the UK Met Office’s decadal prediction system (DePreSys), which is initialised using observations. It is shown that DePreSys captures—with a lead time of several years—the observed cooling and freshening of the North Atlantic SPG. DePreSys also captures changes in SST over the wider North Atlantic and surface climate impacts over the wider region, such as changes in atmospheric circulation in winter and sea ice extent. We show that initialisation of an anomalously weak Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and hence weak northward heat transport, is crucial for DePreSys to predict the magnitude of the observed cooling. Such an anomalously weak AMOC is not captured when ocean observations are not assimilated (i.e. it is not a forced response in this model). The freshening of the SPG is also dominated by ocean salt transport changes in DePreSys; in particular, the simulation of advective freshwater anomalies analogous to the Great Salinity Anomaly were key. Therefore, DePreSys suggests that ocean dynamics played an important role in the cooling of the North Atlantic in the 1960s, and that this event was predictable.

Description: Output from a multi-millennial control simulation of the CSIRO Mark 2 coupled model has been used to investigate quantitatively the relation between the Indian summer monsoon rain and El Nino/Southern Oscillation events. A moving window correlation between these two features revealed marked interannual and multi-decadal variability with the correlation coefficient varying between −0.8 and +0.2. This suggests that current observations showing a decline in this correlation are due to natural climatic variability. A scatter diagram of the anomalies of the Indian summer monsoon rainfall and NINO 3.4 surface temperature showed that in almost 40 % of the cases ENSO events were associated with rainfall anomalies opposite to those implied by the climatological correlation coefficient. Case studies and composites of global distributions of surface temperature and rainfall anomalies for El Nino (or La Nina) events highlight the opposite rainfall anomalies over India that can result from very similar ENSO surface temperature anomalies. Composite differences are used to demonstrate the unique sensitivity of Indian summer monsoon rainfall anomalies to ENSO events. The problem of predicting such anomalies is discussed in relation to the fact that time series of the monsoon rainfall, both observed and simulated, consist of white noise. Based on the scatter diagram it is concluded that in about 60 % of the cases seasonal or annual prediction of monsoon rainfall based on individual ENSO events will result in the correct outcome. Unfortunately, there is no way, a priori, of determining for a given ENSO event whether the correct or a rogue prediction will result. Analysis of the present model’s results suggest that this is an almost world-wide problem for seasonal predictions of rainfall.

Description: The Arctic freshwater cycle plays an important role in regulating regional and global climate. Current observations suggest that an intensification of the high-northern latitude hydrological cycle has caused a freshening of the Arctic and sub-Arctic seas, increasing the potential of weakening overturning strength in the Nordic seas, and reducing temperatures. It is not known if this freshening is a manifestation of the current anthropogenic warming and if the Arctic freshwater cycle has exhibited similar changes in the past, in particular as a response to naturally induced periods of warming, for example during the mid-Holocene hypsithermal. Thus, we have used an earth model of intermediate complexity, LOVECLIM, to investigate the response of the Arctic freshwater cycle, during two warm periods that evolved under different sets of forcings, the mid-Holocene and the twenty-first century. A combination of proxy reconstructions and modelling studies have shown these two periods to exhibit similar surface temperature anomalies, compared to the pre-industrial period, however, it has yet to be determined if the Arctic freshwater cycle and thus, the transport and redistribution of freshwater to the Arctic and the sub-Arctic seas, during these two warm periods, is comparable. Here we provide an overview that shows that the response of the Arctic freshwater cycle during the first half of the twenty-first century can be interpreted as an ‘extreme’ mid-Holocene hydrological cycle. Whilst for the remainder of the twenty-first century, the Arctic freshwater cycle and the majority of its components will likely transition into what can only be described as truly anthropogenic in nature.

Description: In the present work, climate change impacts on three spring (March–June) flood characteristics, i.e. peak, volume and duration, for 21 northeast Canadian basins are evaluated, based on Canadian regional climate model (CRCM) simulations. Conventional univariate frequency analysis for each flood characteristic and copula based bivariate frequency analysis for mutually correlated pairs of flood characteristics (i.e. peak–volume, peak–duration and volume–duration) are carried out. While univariate analysis is focused on return levels of selected return periods (5-, 20- and 50-year), the bivariate analysis is focused on the joint occurrence probabilities P1 and P2 of the three pairs of flood characteristics, where P1 is the probability of any one characteristic in a pair exceeding its threshold and P2 is the probability of both characteristics in a pair exceeding their respective thresholds at the same time. The performance of CRCM is assessed by comparing ERA40 (the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts 40-year reanalysis) driven CRCM simulated flood statistics and univariate and bivariate frequency analysis results for the current 1970–1999 period with those observed at selected 16 gauging stations for the same time period. The Generalized Extreme Value distribution is selected as the marginal distribution for flood characteristics and the Clayton copula for developing bivariate distribution functions. The CRCM performs well in simulating mean, standard deviation, and 5-, 20- and 50-year return levels of flood characteristics. The joint occurrence probabilities are also simulated well by the CRCM. A five-member ensemble of the CRCM simulated streamflow for the current (1970–1999) and future (2041–2070) periods, driven by five different members of a Canadian Global Climate Model ensemble, are used in the assessment of projected changes, where future simulations correspond to A2 scenario. The results of projected changes, in general, indicate increases in the marginal values, i.e. return levels of flood characteristics, and the joint occurrence probabilities P1 and P2. It is found that the future marginal values of flood characteristics and P1 and P2 values corresponding to longer return periods will be affected more by anthropogenic climate change than those corresponding to shorter return periods but the former ones are subjected to higher uncertainties.

Description: This study investigates the seasonal scale variability of the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM), which is distinguished from the seasonal cycle with temporal variation throughout winter. Winters lasting 120 days (Nov. 17–Mar. 16) for a period of 64 years from the NCEP daily reanalysis data set are used to study the seasonal scale variability of the EAWM. Cyclostationary empirical orthogonal function (CSEOF) analysis is adopted to decompose the variability of the EAWM. The second CSEOF mode of 850-hPa temperature exhibits a seasonal scale variation, the physical mechanism of which is explained in terms of physically consistent variations of temperature, geopotential height, sea level pressure, wind, and surface heat fluxes. The seasonal-scale EAWM exhibits a weak subseasonal and a strong interannual variability and has gradually weakened during the 64 years. In a weak EAWM phase, the land-sea contrast of sea level pressure declines in East Asia. Consistent with this change, low-level winds decrease and warm thermal advection increases over the eastern part of mid-latitude East Asia. Latent and sensible heat fluxes are reduced significantly over the marginal seas in East Asia. However, during a strong EAWM phase, the physical conditions in East Asia reverse. A large fraction of the variability of the EAWM is explained by the seasonal cycle and the seasonal scale variation. A two-dimensional EAWM index was developed to explain these two distinct components of the EAWM variability. The new index appears to be suitable for measuring both the subseasonal and the interannual variability of the EAWM.

Description: This study uses experiments with an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) to address the role of the oceans and the effect of land–atmosphere coupling on the predictability of summertime rainfall over northern Argentina focusing on interdecadal time scales during 1901–2006. Ensembles of experiments where the AGCM is forced with historical sea surface temperature (SST) in the global, Pacific and tropical-North Atlantic domains are used. The role of land–atmosphere interaction is assessed comparing the output of simulations with active and climatological soil moisture. A maximum covariance analysis between precipitation and SST reveals the impact of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the equatorial–tropical South Atlantic on rainfall over northern Argentina. Model simulations further show that while the dominant influence comes from the Pacific basin, the Atlantic influence can explain a large transition from dry to wet decades over northern Argentina during the beginning of the 1970s. Analysis of anomalies before and after the transition reveals an upper level anticyclonic circulation off the Patagonian coast with barotropic structure. This circulation enhances the moisture transport and convergence in northern Argentina and, together with enhanced evaporation, increased the rainfall after 1970. The SST pattern is dominated by cold conditions in the equatorial Atlantic and warm eastern Pacific and South Atlantic. We also found that land–atmosphere interaction leads to a representation of the long term rainfall evolution over northern Argentina that is closer to the observed one. Moreover, it leads to a smaller dispersion among ensemble members, thus resulting in a larger signal-to-noise ratio.

Description: Westerly wind bursts (WWBs) that occur in the western tropical Pacific are believed to play an important role in the development of El Niño events. Here, following the study of Lengaigne et al. (Clim Dyn 23(6):601–620, 2004 ), we conduct numerical simulations in which we reexamine the response of the climate system to an observed wind burst added to a coupled general circulation model. Two sets of twin ensemble experiments are conducted (each set has control and perturbed experiments). In the first set, the initial ocean heat content of the system is higher than the model climatology (recharged), while in the second set it is nearly normal (neutral). For the recharged state, in the absence of WWBs, a moderate El Niño with a maximum warming in the central Pacific (CP) develops in about a year. In contrast, for the neutral state, there develops a weak La Niña. However, when the WWB is imposed, the situation dramatically changes: the recharged state slides into an El Niño with a maximum warming in the eastern Pacific, while the neutral set produces a weak CP El Niño instead of previous La Niña conditions. The different response of the system to the exact same perturbations is controlled by the initial state of the ocean and the subsequent ocean–atmosphere interactions involving the interplay between the eastward shift of the warm pool and the warming of the eastern equatorial Pacific. Consequently, the observed diversity of El Niño, including the occurrence of extreme events, may depend on stochastic atmospheric processes, modulating El Niño properties within a broad continuum.

Description: Climate is an important driver of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) dynamics in boreal catchments characterized by networks of streams within forest-wetland landscape mosaics. In this paper, we assess how climate change may affect stream DOC concentrations ([DOC]) and export from boreal forest streams with a multi-model ensemble approach. First, we apply an ensemble of regional climate models (RCMs) to project soil temperatures and stream-flows. These data are then used to drive two biogeochemical models of surface water DOC: (1) The Integrated Catchment model for Carbon (INCA-C), a detailed process-based model of DOC operating at the catchment scale, and (2) The Riparian Integration Model (RIM), a simple dynamic hillslope scale model of stream [DOC]. All RCMs project a consistent increase in temperature and precipitation as well as a shift in spring runoff peaks from May to April. However, they present a considerable range of possible future runoff conditions with an ensemble median increase of 31 % between current and future (2061–2090) conditions. Both biogeochemical models perform well in describing the dynamics of present-day stream [DOC] and fluxes, but disagree in their future projections. Here, we assess possible futures in three boreal catchments representative of forest, mire and mixed landscape elements. INCA-C projects a wider range of stream [DOC] due to its temperature sensitivity, whereas RIM gives consistently larger inter-annual variation and a wider range of exports due to its sensitivity to hydrological variations. The uncertainties associated with modeling complex processes that control future DOC dynamics in boreal and temperate catchments are still the main limitation to our understanding of DOC mechanisms under changing climate conditions. Novel, currently overlooked or unknown drivers may appear that will present new challenges to modelling DOC in the future.

Description: Based on dust storm records and meteorological data from six stations in the area surrounding the Tengger Desert over the period 1960–2007, the diurnal, monthly and interannual variation of dust storms and severe dust storms, as well as their relation to wind speed, precipitation and temperature, are analyzed and discussed. Statistical analyses demonstrate that such storms occur more frequently from 9:00 to 21:00 local standard time and much more frequently between March and May, especially April. Dust storm frequency (DSF) and severe dust storm frequency (SDSF) show a significant linear decreasing trend from 1960 to 2007. For monthly variability, winds (especially strong ones with speeds 10–20 m/s) are the main factor controlling both dust storm types. Precipitation and temperature have an indirect effect on DSF and SDSF by controlling vegetation growth. For interannual variability, strong wind is still the main control, with precipitation a relatively important cofactor. Temperature has an irregular but somewhat negative relationship with dust storms. Precipitation and especially temperature have likely been important in the increase of DSF since 2000.

Description: Due to a scarcity of observations and its long memory of uncertain past climate, the Antarctic Ice Sheet remains a largely unknown factor in the prediction of global sea level change. As the history of the ice sheet plays a key role in its future evolution, in this study we model the Antarctic Ice Sheet from the Last Glacial Maximum (21 kyr ago) until the year 2100 with the ice-dynamical model ANICE. We force the model with different temperature, surface mass balance and sea-level records to investigate the importance of these different aspects for the evolution of the ice sheet. Additionally, we compare the model output from 21 kyr ago until the present with observations to assess model performance in simulating the total grounded ice volume and the evolution of different regions of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Although there are some clear limitations of the model, we conclude that sea-level change has driven the deglaciation of the ice sheet, whereas future temperature change and the history of the ice sheet are the primary cause of changes in ice volume in the future. We estimate the change in grounded ice volume between its maximum (around 15 kyr ago) and the present-day to be between 8.4 and 12.5 m sea-level equivalent and the contribution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to the global mean sea level in 2100, with respect to 2000, to be −22 to 63 mm.

Description: Keeping the systematic bias of the climate forecast system model version 2 (CFSv2) in mind, an attempt is made to improve the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) rainfall variability in the model from diurnal through daily to seasonal scale. Experiments with default simplified Arakawa–Schubert (SAS) and a revised SAS schemes are carried out to make 15 years climate run (free run) to evaluate the model fidelity with revised SAS as compared to default SAS. It is clearly seen that the revised SAS is able to reduce some of the biases of CFSv2 with default SAS. Improvement is seen in the annual seasonal cycle, onset and withdrawal but most importantly the rainfall probability distribution function (PDF) has improved significantly. To understand the reason behind the PDF improvement, the diurnal rainfall simulation is analysed and it is found that the PDF of diurnal rainfall has significantly improved with respect to even a high resolution CFSv2 T382 version. In the diurnal run with revised SAS, the PDF of rainfall over central India has remarkably improved. The improvement of diurnal cycle of total rainfall has actually been contributed by the improvement of diurnal cycle of convection and associated convective rainfall. This is reflected in outgoing longwave radiation and high cloud diurnal cycle. This improvement of convective cycle has resolved a long standing problem of dry bias by CFSv2 over Indian land mass and wet bias over equatorial Indian Ocean. Besides the improvement, there are some areas where there are still scopes for further development. The cold tropospheric temperature bias, low cloud fractions need further improvement. To check the role of shallow convection, another free run is made with revised SAS along with shallow convection (SC). The major difference between the new and old SC schemes lies in the heating and cooling behavior in lower-atmospheric layers above the planetary boundary layer. However, the inclusion of revised SC scheme could not show much improvement as compared to revised SAS with deep convection. Thus, it seems that revised SAS with deep convection can be a potentially better parameterization scheme for CFSv2 in simulating ISM rainfall variability.

Description: This work analyzes the properties of precipitation in the Hindu-Kush Karakoram Himalaya region as simulated by thirty-two state-of-the-art global climate models participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5). We separately consider the Hindu-Kush Karakoram (HKK) in the west and the Himalaya in the east. These two regions are characterized by different precipitation climatologies, which are associated with different circulation patterns. Historical model simulations are compared with the Climate Research Unit (CRU) and Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) precipitation data in the period 1901–2005. Future precipitation is analyzed for the two representative concentration pathways (RCP) RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios. We find that the multi-model ensemble mean and most individual models exhibit a wet bias with respect to CRU and GPCC observations in both regions and for all seasons. The models differ greatly in the seasonal climatology of precipitation which they reproduce in the HKK. The CMIP5 models predict wetter future conditions in the Himalaya in summer, with a gradual precipitation increase throughout the 21st century. Wetter summer future conditions are also predicted by most models in the RCP 8.5 scenario for the HKK, while on average no significant change can be detected in winter precipitation for both regions. In general, no single model (or group of models) emerges as that providing the best results for all the statistics considered, and the large spread in the behavior of individual models suggests to consider multi-model ensemble means with extreme care.

Description: Previous observational and model studies have shown that a warm (cold) event in the equatorial Atlantic during the boreal summer are related to the development of a Pacific La Niña (El Niño) event, that is fully developed in the following winter. Although the connection takes place via atmospheric bridge, the processes at work have not been clarified for such a remote and lagged relationship. The present paper uses a partially coupled atmosphere–ocean model to infer a mechanism by which a Pacific El Niño event can be developed. In this way, enhanced equatorial convection in the equatorial Atlantic during a warm event results in enhanced subsidence and surface wind divergence over the equatorial Pacific around the dateline. This wind anomaly contributes to pile up water in the western equatorial Pacific, triggering a perturbation in the depth of the oceanic thermocline, which propagates eastward as an equatorial Kelvin wave from autumn to winter. The thermocline shallowing as the wave propagates allows for cooling of the oceanic mixed layer through anomalous temperature advection by anomalous zonal currents and by mean vertical entrainment velocity. Zonal advective and thermocline feedbacks reinforce the surface winds anomalies over the central eastern equatorial Pacific setting up the conditions for the development of a cold event in this ocean. The sequence during an Atlantic cold event is similar with the appropriate change in signs. These findings are relevant to ENSO predictability at seasonal timescales.

Description: In this study, we assess systematically the impact of different initialisation procedures on the predictability of the sea ice in the Southern Ocean. These initialisation strategies are based on three data assimilation methods: the nudging, the particle filter with sequential importance resampling and the nudging proposal particle filter. An Earth system model of intermediate complexity is used to perform hindcast simulations in a perfect model approach. The predictability of the Antarctic sea ice at interannual to multi-decadal timescales is estimated through two aspects: the spread of the hindcast ensemble, indicating the uncertainty of the ensemble, and the correlation between the ensemble mean and the pseudo-observations, used to assess the accuracy of the prediction. Our results show that at decadal timescales more sophisticated data assimilation methods as well as denser pseudo-observations used to initialise the hindcasts decrease the spread of the ensemble. However, our experiments did not clearly demonstrate that one of the initialisation methods systematically provides with a more accurate prediction of the sea ice in the Southern Ocean than the others. Overall, the predictability at interannual timescales is limited to 3 years ahead at most. At multi-decadal timescales, the trends in sea ice extent computed over the time period just after the initialisation are clearly better correlated between the hindcasts and the pseudo-observations if the initialisation takes into account the pseudo-observations. The correlation reaches values larger than 0.5 in winter. This high correlation has likely its origin in the slow evolution of the ocean ensured by its strong thermal inertia, showing the importance of the quality of the initialisation below the sea ice.

Description: Two dominant types of East Asian mobile trough (EAMT) are identified by a novel mobile trough detection algorithm. The two major EAMTs likely pass through to the north and the south of Lake Baikal. In this study, both of synoptic and planetary time scales influences on East Asia are studied. For synoptic scale, southern path of mobile trough shows a higher rate of intensification that of northern path. Southern path has stronger impact on Southeast Asia temperature fluctuation because of more southern pathway and stronger magnitude of wave train. But duration of fluctuation is shorter in southern due to the downstream development. For planetary scale, the northern path shows a large warm anomaly over Southeast Asia and a cold anomaly over Northeast Asia, which is associated with the northward shift of the jet stream. The southern path shows a cold anomaly over East Asia due to a northwesterly anomaly. The forcing of high frequency eddy on low frequency eddy is estimated in terms of momentum and energy. The reinforcement of high frequency eddy flux on low frequency variation can be observed in northern path, but not in southern path. The energy difference for two paths is also caused by the variations of barotropic and baroclinic conversion. The energy tendency of interaction between two frequency eddies is only responsible for sustention of energy anomaly over southwestern Japan.

Description: In the Indian Ocean basin the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are most sensitive to changes in the oceanic depth of the thermocline in the region of the Seychelles Dome. Observational studies have suggested that the strong SST variations in this region influence the atmospheric evolution around the basin, while its impact could extend far into the Pacific and the extra-tropics. Here we study the adjustments of the coupled atmosphere-ocean system to a winter shallow doming event using dedicated ensemble simulations with the state-of-the-art EC-Earth climate model. The doming creates an equatorial Kelvin wave and a pair of westward moving Rossby waves, leading to higher SST 1–2 months later in the Western equatorial Indian Ocean. Atmospheric convection is strengthened and the Walker circulation responds with reduced convection over Indonesia and cooling of the SST in that region. The Pacific warm pool convection shifts eastward and an oceanic Kelvin wave is triggered at thermocline depth. The wave leads to an SST warming in the East Equatorial Pacific 5–6 months after the initiation of the Seychelles Dome event. The atmosphere responds to this warming with weak anomalous atmospheric convection. The changes in the upper tropospheric divergence in this sequence of events create large-scale Rossby waves that propagate away from the tropics along the atmospheric waveguides. We suggest to repeat these types of experiments with other models to test the robustness of the results. We also suggest to create the doming event in June so that the East-Pacific warming occurs in November when the atmosphere is most sensitive to SST anomalies and El Niño could possibly be triggered by the doming event under suitable conditions.

Description: We evaluate the ability of global climate models participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) to reproduce observed seasonality and interannual variability of temperature over the Caribbean, and compare these with simulations from atmosphere-only (AMIP5) and previous-generation CMIP3 models. Compared to station and gridded observations, nearly every CMIP5, CMIP3 and AMIP5 simulation tends to reproduce the primary inter-regional features of the Caribbean annual temperature cycle. In most coupled model simulations, however, boreal summer temperature lags observations by about 1 month, with a similar lag in the simulated annual cycle of sea surface temperature (SST), and a systematic cold bias in both climatological annual mean air temperature and SST. There is some improvement from CMIP3 to CMIP5 but the bias is still marked compared to AMIP5 and observations, implying that biases in the annual temperature cycle may originate in the ocean component of the coupled models. This also suggests a tendency for models to over-emphasize the influence of SSTs on near-surface temperature, a bias that may be exacerbated by model tendency to over-estimate ocean mixed layer depth as well. In contrast, we find that both coupled and atmosphere-only models tend to reasonably simulate the response of observed temperature to global temperature, to regional and large-scale variability across the Caribbean region and the Gulf of Mexico, and even to more remote Atlantic and Pacific influences. These findings contribute to building confidence in the ability of coupled models to simulate the effect of global-scale change on the Caribbean.

Description: Mega-El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), as two principal components of the global air-sea coupling system, may have synchronous or out-synchronous fluctuations during different epochs. Understanding such connection change is instrumental for climate prediction, particularly the decadal prediction. Results in this study show that mega-ENSO has experienced a notable inter-decadal change in its linkage with the winter NAO during the past 56 years: mega-ENSO was significantly correlated with the NAO during 1957–1981 (or synchronous epoch), while such correlation has broken down since 1982 (or out-synchronous epoch). This marked change might be attributed to a sea surface temperature (SST) forcing change in the North Atlantic, based on the observational and numerical evidences in this study. The synchronous epoch is concurrent with the anomalous tropical North Atlantic (TNA) SST forcing, whereas the out-synchronous epoch is associated with the anomalous extra-tropical North Atlantic (XNA) SST forcing. Two possible reasons may explain how the synchronous behaviors between mega-ENSO and the NAO were tied to the TNA SST anomaly (SSTA). There is a positive feedback between the TNA SSTA and the NAO-like atmosphere anomalies, which helps to “prolong” the NAO impacts from the developing phase through mature phase of mega-ENSO. Additionally, the TNA SSTA itself may induce a NAO-like atmosphere anomaly. Since 1982, the TNA SSTA has been replaced by the XNA SSTA and the latter primarily favors a NAO-neutral state in the atmosphere, which ends the synchronous epoch.

Description: Using modern climate data and paleodata, we voyage through 17 orders of magnitude in scale explicitly displaying the astounding temporal variability of the atmosphere from fractions of a second to hundreds of millions of years. By combining real space (Haar fluctuation) and Fourier space analysis, we produce composites quantifying the variability. These show that the classical “mental picture” in which quasi periodic processes are taken as the fundamental signals embedded in a spectral continuum of background “noise” is an iconic relic of a nearly 40 year old “educated guess” in which the flatness of the continuum was exaggerated by a factor of ≈10 15 . Using modern data we show that a more realistic picture is the exact opposite: the quasiperiodic processes are small background perturbations to spectrally continuous wide range scaling foreground processes. We identify five of these: weather, macroweather, climate, macroclimate and megaclimate, with rough transition scales of 10 days, 50 years, 80 kyrs, 0.5 Myr, and we quantify each with scaling exponents. We show that as we move from one regime to the next, that the fluctuation exponent ( H ) alternates in sign so that fluctuations change sign between growing ( H  〉 0) and diminishing ( H  〈 0) with scale. For example, mean temperature fluctuations increase up to about 5 K at 10 days (the lifetime of planetary structures), then decrease to about 0.2 K at 50 years, and then increase again to about 5 K at glacial-interglacial scales. The pattern then repeats with a minimum RMS fluctuation of 1–2 K at ≈0.5 Myr increasing to ≈20 K at 500 Myrs. We show how this can be understood with the help of the new, pedagogical “ H model”. Both deterministic General Circulation Models (GCM’s) with fixed forcings (“control runs”) and stochastic turbulence-based models reproduce weather and macroweather, but not the climate; for this we require “climate forcings” and/or new slow climate processes. Averaging macroweather over periods increasing to ≈30–50 yrs yields apparently converging values: macroweather is “what you expect”. Macroweather averages over ≈30–50 yrs have the lowest variability, they yield well defined climate states and justify the otherwise ad hoc “climate normal” period. However, moving to longer periods, these states increasingly fluctuate: just as with the weather, the climate changes in an apparently unstable manner; the climate is not what you expect. Moving to time scales beyond 100 kyrs, to the macroclimate regime, we find that averaging the varying climate increasingly converges, but ultimately—at scales beyond ≈0.5 Myr in the megaclimate, we discover that the apparent point of convergence itself starts to “wander”, presumably representing shifts from one climate to another.

Description: This study assesses the skill of advanced regional climate models (RCMs) in simulating southeastern United States (SE US) summer precipitation and explores the physical mechanisms responsible for the simulation skill at a process level. Analysis of the RCM output for the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program indicates that the RCM simulations of summer precipitation show the largest biases and a remarkable spread over the SE US compared to other regions in the contiguous US. The causes of such a spread are investigated by performing simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, a next-generation RCM developed by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. The results show that the simulated biases in SE US summer precipitation are due mainly to the misrepresentation of the modeled North Atlantic subtropical high (NASH) western ridge. In the WRF simulations, the NASH western ridge shifts 7° northwestward when compared to that in the reanalysis ensemble, leading to a dry bias in the simulated summer precipitation according to the relationship between the NASH western ridge and summer precipitation over the southeast. Experiments utilizing the four dimensional data assimilation technique further suggest that the improved representation of the circulation patterns (i.e., wind fields) associated with the NASH western ridge substantially reduces the bias in the simulated SE US summer precipitation. Our analysis of circulation dynamics indicates that the NASH western ridge in the WRF simulations is significantly influenced by the simulated planetary boundary layer (PBL) processes over the Gulf of Mexico. Specifically, a decrease (increase) in the simulated PBL height tends to stabilize (destabilize) the lower troposphere over the Gulf of Mexico, and thus inhibits (favors) the onset and/or development of convection. Such changes in tropical convection induce a tropical–extratropical teleconnection pattern, which modulates the circulation along the NASH western ridge in the WRF simulations and contributes to the modeled precipitation biases over the SE US. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that the NASH western ridge is an important factor responsible for the RCM skill in simulating SE US summer precipitation. Furthermore, the improvements in the PBL parameterizations for the Gulf of Mexico might help advance RCM skill in representing the NASH western ridge circulation and summer precipitation over the SE US.

Description: July-to-October temperature variations are reconstructed for the last 800 years based on tree-ring widths from the Cazorla Range. Annual tree-ring width at this site has been found to be negatively correlated with temperature of the previous summer. This relationship is genuine, metabolically plausible, and cannot be explained as an indirect correlation mediated by hydroclimate. The resulting reconstruction (NCZ Tjaso ) represents the southernmost annually resolved temperature record based on tree-rings in Europe and provides detailed information on the regional climate evolution during the Late Holocene in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. The tree-ring based temperature reconstruction of Cazorla Range reveals predominantly warm summer temperatures during the transition between the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) and the Little Ice Age (LIA) from the 13th to the mid of the sixteenth century. The LIA spanned a slightly longer time (1500–1930 CE) than in other European summer temperature reconstructions from the Alps and Pyrenees. The twentieth century, though warmer than the preceding centuries, does not show unprecedented warmth in the last 800 years. Three ensembles of climate simulations conducted with two global atmosphere–ocean general circulation climate models (GCMs), considering different external forcings, were used for comparison: ECHO-G (Erik) and MPI-ESM (E1 and E2). Additionally, individual simulations were available from GCM included in the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, as well as single-forcing simulations performed with MPI-ESM. The comparison of the reconstructed and simulated temperatures revealed a close agreement of NCZ Tjaso with the simulations performed with total solar irradiance forcing with wider amplitude. Furthermore, the correlations with single-forcing simulations suggest volcanism as the main factor controlling preindustrial summer temperature variations in the Cazorla Range over the last five centuries. The persistent anti-correlation between NCZ Tjaso and simulated temperatures during the MCA–LIA transitional period underlines the current limitations for attributing temperature variations during that period to internal variability or external forcing.

Description: This study quantitatively evaluated how insulation by snow depth (SND) affected the soil thermal regime and permafrost degradation in the pan-Arctic area, and more generally defined the characteristics of soil temperature (T SOIL ) and SND from 1901 to 2009. This was achieved through experiments performed with the land surface model CHANGE to assess sensitivity to winter precipitation as well as air temperature. Simulated T SOIL , active layer thickness (ALT), SND, and snow density were generally comparable with in situ or satellite observations at large scales and over long periods. Northernmost regions had snow that remained relatively stable and in a thicker state during the past four decades, generating greater increases in T SOIL . Changes in snow cover have led to changes in the thermal state of the underlying soil, which is strongly dependent on both the magnitude and the timing of changes in snowfall. Simulations of the period 2001–2009 revealed significant differences in the extent of near-surface permafrost, reflecting differences in the model’s treatment of meteorology and the soil bottom boundary. Permafrost loss was greater when SND increased in autumn rather than in winter, due to insulation of the soil resulting from early cooling. Simulations revealed that T SOIL tended to increase over most of the pan-Arctic from 1901 to 2009, and that this increase was significant in northern regions, especially in northeastern Siberia where SND is responsible for 50 % or more of the changes in T SOIL at a depth of 3.6 m. In the same region, ALT also increased at a rate of approximately 2.3 cm per decade. The most sensitive response of ALT to changes in SND appeared in the southern boundary regions of permafrost, in contrast to permafrost temperatures within the 60°N–80°N region, which were more sensitive to changes in snow cover. Finally, our model suggests that snow cover contributes to the warming of permafrost in northern regions and could play a more important role under conditions of future Arctic warming.

Description: Tropical cyclones (TCs) in the South China Sea (SCS) are either generated locally or formed non-locally in the Northwest Pacific Ocean (NWP) and entered into the SCS. Here, it is found that local TCs vary out-of-phase with non-local TCs in summer. That is, if fewer (more) TCs enter into the SCS from the NWP, more (fewer) TCs are generated over the SCS. Further analyses show that variability of the western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH) is responsible for the out-of-phase relationship. As the WPSH shifts eastward (westward), fewer (more) non-local TCs formed in the NWP can enter into the SCS because TCs are recurved northward (moved westward). Due to the eastward (westward) movement of the WPSH, positive (negative) low-level vorticity anomalies, weak (strong) vertical wind shear between the upper and lower troposphere, and anomalous upward (downward) motion in the middle troposphere are induced in the northern SCS. The changes in the relative vorticity, vertical wind shear and vertical velocity are favorable (unfavorable) for the local TC genesis in the SCS. These variations of non-local and local TCs result in an out-of-phase relationship between TCs formed locally in the SCS and non-locally in the NWP.

Description: The response of the wintertime Northern Hemisphere (NH) stratosphere to applied extratropical zonally symmetric zonal torques, simulated by a primitive equation model of the middle atmosphere, is presented. This is relevant to understanding the effect of gravity wave drag (GWD) in models and the influence of natural forcings such as the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), El Ninõ-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), solar cycle and volcanic eruptions on the polar vortex. There is a strong feedback due to planetary waves, which approximately cancels the direct effect of the torque on the zonal acceleration in the steady state and leads to an EP flux convergence response above the torque’s location. The residual circulation response is very different to that predicted assuming wave feedbacks are negligible. The results are consistent with the predictions of ray theory, with applied westerly torques increasing the meridional potential vorticity gradient, thus encouraging greater upward planetary wave propagation into the stratosphere. The steady state circulation response to torques applied at high latitudes closely resembles the Northern annular mode (NAM) in perpetual January simulations. This behaviour is analogous to that shown by the Lorenz system and tropospheric models. Imposed westerly high-latitude torques lead counter-intuitively to an easterly zonal mean zonal wind \((\overline{u})\) response at high latitudes, due to the wave feedbacks. However, in simulations with a seasonal cycle, the feedbacks are qualitatively similar but weaker, and the long-term response is less NAM-like and no longer easterly at high latitudes. This is consistent with ray theory and differences in climatological \(\overline{u}\) between the two types of simulations. The response to a tropospheric wave forcing perturbation is also NAM-like. These results suggest that dynamical feedbacks tend to make the long-term NH extratropical stratospheric response to arbitrary external forcings NAM-like, but only if the feedbacks are sufficiently strong. This may explain why the observed polar vortex responses to natural forcings such as the QBO and ENSO are NAM-like. The results imply that wave feedbacks must be understood and accurately modelled in order to understand and predict the influence of GWD and other external forcings on the polar vortex, and that biases in a model’s climatology will cause biases in these feedbacks.

Description: This study documents the effect of horizontal resolution on the ability of the Met Office third-generation Global Atmosphere Regional Climate Model (HadGEM3-RA), a regional atmospheric configuration of the HadGEM3 model, to simulate rainfall variability over Africa. It is based on six 20-year long RCM simulations driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis and performed at 12, 25, 50, 70, 90, and 150 km over the CORDEX-Africa domain. To gain further insight into model errors, we also compared the HadGEM3-RA’s performance to that of the parent General Circulation Model using three different spatial resolutions (70, 100, and 150 km), and to HadRM3P—the current Met Office regional climate model. It is found that the 50 km resolution RCM reproduces reasonably the spatial and temporal features of rainfall variability across regions. These include the seasonal progression of the tropical rainbelt, its extent and location, the annual cycle and interannual variability. Although model biases vary across seasons and locations, a prominent feature is the over-prediction of rainfall totals over Central Africa, and underestimation of rainfall in coastal areas of the Guinea Gulf during boreal spring and autumn. HadGEM3-RA improves with increased horizontal resolution, but some model errors persist. Comparison with the parent global model simulations demonstrates generally a realistic and consistent behaviour over large scales—suggesting that the physical formulation is able to capture the key driving processes, but also confirms the benefit of increasing the model horizontal resolution. Despite the model errors, HadGEM3-RA rainfall shows superiority over that from HadRM3P, ERA-Interim and MERRA datasets—indicating that the associated dynamical features of HadGEM3-RA can complement the physical understanding gained from reanalyses. This article also highlights the challenges for evaluating climate models in data sparse regions where satellite derived rainfall and gridded observational datasets often diverge.

Description: Despite instrumental records showing recent large temperature rises on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), only a few tree-ring temperature reconstructions do capture this warming trend. Here, we sampled 260 trees from seven Alpine treeline locations across the southeast TP. Standardized tree-ring width chronologies of Abies squamata and Sabina squamat were produced following Regional Curve Standardization detrending. The leading principal component of these records is well correlated with the regional summer (JJA) minimum temperature (MinT) (R 2  = 0.47, P  〈 0.001, 1953–2009). Hence we produce a regional summer MinT reconstruction spanning the last 212 years. This reconstruction reveals a long-term persistent warming trend, starting in the 1820s, at a rate of 0.45 ± 0.09 °C/century (1820–2009). This trend is also detected since the 1820s in the Asian summer MinT reconstruction produced by the PAGES 2K project, with a very close warming rate (0.43 ± 0.08 °C/century, 1820–1989). Our record also displays an enhanced multi-decadal variability since the mid-twentieth century. The 1990s–2000s are the warmest of our whole record, due to the superposition of the gradual warming trend and decadal variability during this interval. The strongest decadal cooling occurs during the 1950s and the largest warming trend during the 1970s. The magnitude of warming from 1973 to 2003 was larger than the total warming trend from 1820s to 2009. Extreme events are also more frequent since 1950. The pattern of multi-decadal variability has similarities with the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation, suggesting common causality. CMIP5 historical simulations fail to capture both the magnitude and timing of this multi-decadal variability. The ensemble CMIP5 average produces a steady warming trend starting in the 1970s, which only accounts for about 60 % of the observed warming trend during this period. We conclude that TP summer temperature could reflect a climate response to increased greenhouse gas concentrations, however modulated by multi-decadal variations common with the Atlantic sector.

Description: The nonlinear forcing singular vector (NFSV) approach is used to identify the most disturbing tendency error of the Zebiak–Cane model associated with El Niño predictions, which is most potential for yielding aggressively large prediction errors of El Niño events. The results show that only one NFSV exists for each of the predictions for the predetermined model El Niño events. These NFSVs cause the largest prediction error for the corresponding El Niño event in perfect initial condition scenario. It is found that the NFSVs often present large-scale zonal dipolar structures and are insensitive to the intensities of El Niño events, but are dependent on the prediction periods. In particular, the NFSVs associated with the predictions crossing through the growth phase of El Niño tend to exhibit a zonal dipolar pattern with positive anomalies in the equatorial central-western Pacific and negative anomalies in the equatorial eastern Pacific (denoted as “NFSV1”). Meanwhile, those associated with the predictions through the decaying phase of El Niño are inclined to present another zonal dipolar pattern (denoted as “NFSV2”), which is almost opposite to the NFSV1. Similarly, the linear forcing singular vectors (FSVs), which are computed based on the tangent linear model, can also be classified into two types “FSV1” and “FSV2”. We find that both FSV1 and NFSV1 often cause negative prediction errors for Niño-3 SSTA of the El Niño events, while the FSV2 and NFSV2 usually yield positive prediction errors. However, due to the effect of nonlinearities, the NFSVs usually have the western pole of the zonal dipolar pattern much farther west, and covering much broader region. The nonlinearities have a suppression effect on the growth of the prediction errors caused by the FSVs and the particular structure of the NFSVs tends to reduce such suppression effect of nonlinearities, finally making the NFSV-type tendency error yield much large prediction error for Niño-3 SSTA of El Niño events. The NFSVs, compared to the FSVs, are more applicable in describing the most disturbing tendency error of the Zebiak–Cane model since they consider the effect of nonlinearities. The NFSV-type tendency errors may provide information concerning the sensitive areas where the model errors are much more likely to yield large prediction errors for El Niño events. If the simulation skills of the states in the sensitive areas can be improved, the ENSO forecast skill may in turn be greatly increased.

Description: Coupling between the central tropical Pacific (CTP) sea surface temperature (SST) variability and the Antarctic stratosphere known from previous studies is analysed using a lagged correlation method. Monthly mean SST, stratospheric temperatures and zonal winds from the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis and total ozone from the Merged Ozone Data Set over the 1979–2011 period are used. Indices for interannual variability were created and sequential lagged correlations were used to determine the spatial patterns and time lags of the strongest teleconnection. It has been revealed that interannual SST variations in a westward-oriented V - shaped pattern in the CTP region (160–220°E, 30°N–20°S) are associated with statistically significant positive signals in zonally asymmetric region of the Antarctic stratosphere temperature field. Stratospheric pathway dominates in the poleward and downward propagation of the CTP related anomaly in the Southern Hemisphere zonal wind variability. Abrupt modification of the teleconnection patterns in October is accompanied by occurrence of the intense meridional wave train in the lower stratosphere and troposphere. The strongest lagged correlations between the CTP SST index in June and the Southern Hemisphere atmosphere variables in October ( r  = ±0.7) could be related to the corresponding seasonal peaks in the stationary planetary wave activity. Possible causes of the V-pattern formation and the lagged teleconnection mechanisms are briefly discussed.

Description: El Niño phenomenon is the main oceanic driver of the interannual atmospheric variability and a determinant source of predictability in the tropics and extratropics. Several studies have found a consistent and statistically significant impact of El Niño over the North Atlantic European Sector, which could lead to an improvement of the skill of current seasonal forecast systems over Europe. Nevertheless, this signal seems to be non-stationary in time and it could be modulated by the ocean at very low frequencies. Hence, the seasonal climate predictability based on El Niño could be variable and only effective for specific time periods. This study considers the multidecadal changes in the ocean mean state as a possible modulator of ENSO-European rainfall teleconnection at interannual timescales. A long control simulation of the CNRM-CM5 model is used to substantiate this hypothesis and to assess if it can be relevant to explain the non-stationary behavior seen in the twentieth century. The model reproduces the leading rainfall mode over the Euro-Mediterranean region, and its non stationary link with El Niño. This teleconnection has been identified in coincidence with changes of the zonal mean flow at upper levels, which influence the propagation of the waves from the tropics to extratropics through the atmosphere and, hence, to explain the changing impact over Europe. However, the non-stationary impact observed along the twentieth century could also be related to the observed changes in the interannual oceanic forcing signal itself. The results obtained suggest, for both hypotheses, an important role of the natural internal variability of the ocean at multidecadal timescales.

Description: The present study aims to develop a general circulation model (GCM) with improved simulation of heavy precipitation frequency by improving the representations of cloud and rain processes. GCMs with conventional convective parameterizations produce common bias in precipitation frequency: they overestimate light precipitation and underestimate heavy precipitation with respect to observed values. This frequency shift toward light precipitation is attributed here to a lack of consideration of cloud microphysical processes related to heavy precipitation. The budget study of cloud microphysical processes using a cloud-resolving model shows that the melting of graupel and accretion of cloud water by graupel and rain water are important processes in the generation of heavy precipitation. However, those processes are not expressed explicitly in conventional GCMs with convective parameterizations. In the present study, the cloud microphysics is modified to allow its implementation into a GCM with a horizontal resolution of 50 km. The newly developed GCM, which includes explicit cloud microphysics, produces more heavy precipitation and less light precipitation than conventional GCMs, thus simulating a precipitation frequency that is closer to the observed. This study demonstrates that the GCM requires a full representation of cloud microphysics to simulate the extreme precipitation frequency realistically. It is also shown that a coarse-resolution GCM with cloud microphysics requires an additional mixing process in the lower troposphere.

Description: We analyze for the first time all 16 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 models with explicit marine ecological modules to identify the common mechanisms involved in projected phytoplankton biomass, productivity, and organic carbon export changes over the twenty-first century in the RCP8.5 scenario (years 2080–2099) compared to the historical scenario (years 1980–1999). All models predict decreases in primary and export production globally of up to 30 % of the historical value. We divide the ocean into biomes using upwelling velocities, sea-ice coverage, and maximum mixed layer depths. Models generally show expansion of subtropical, oligotrophic biomes and contraction of marginal sea-ice biomes. The equatorial and subtropical biomes account for 77 % of the total modern oceanic primary production (PP), but contribute 117 % to the global drop in PP, slightly compensated by an increase in PP in high latitudes. The phytoplankton productivity response to climate is surprisingly similar across models in low latitude biomes, indicating a common set of modeled processes controlling productivity changes. Ecological responses are less consistent across models in the subpolar and sea-ice biomes. Inter-hemispheric asymmetries in physical drivers result in stronger climate-driven relative decreases in biomass, productivity, and export of organic matter in the northern compared to the southern hemisphere low latitudes. The export ratio, a measure of the efficiency of carbon export to the deep ocean, decreases across low and mid-latitude biomes and models with more than one phytoplankton type, particularly in the northern hemisphere. Inter-model variability is much higher for biogeochemical than physical variables in the historical period, but is very similar among predicted 100-year biogeochemical and physical changes. We include detailed biome-by-biome analyses, discuss the decoupling between biomass, productivity and export across biomes and models, and present statistical significance and consistency across models using a novel technique based on bootstrapping combined with a weighting scheme based on similarity across models.

Description: We describe the method of history matching, a method currently used to help quantify parametric uncertainty in climate models, and argue for its use in identifying and removing structural biases in climate models at the model development stage. We illustrate the method using an investigation of the potential to improve upon known ocean circulation biases in a coupled non-flux-adjusted climate model (the third Hadley Centre Climate Model; HadCM3). In particular, we use history matching to investigate whether or not the behaviour of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), which is known to be too strong in HadCM3, represents a structural bias that could be corrected using the model parameters. We find that it is possible to improve the ACC strength using the parameters and observe that doing this leads to more realistic representations of the sub-polar and sub-tropical gyres, sea surface salinities (both globally and in the North Atlantic), sea surface temperatures in the sinking regions in the North Atlantic and in the Southern Ocean, North Atlantic Deep Water flows, global precipitation, wind fields and sea level pressure. We then use history matching to locate a region of parameter space predicted not to contain structural biases for ACC and SSTs that is around 1 % of the original parameter space. We explore qualitative features of this space and show that certain key ocean and atmosphere parameters must be tuned carefully together in order to locate climates that satisfy our chosen metrics. Our study shows that attempts to tune climate model parameters that vary only a handful of parameters relevant to a given process at a time will not be as successful or as efficient as history matching.

Description: The West Africa rainfall regime constitutes a considerable challenge for Regional Climate Models (RCMs) due to the complexity of dynamical and physical processes that characterise the West African Monsoon. In this paper, daily precipitation statistics are evaluated from the contributions to the AFRICA-CORDEX experiment from two ERA-Interim driven Canadian RCMs: CanRCM4, developed at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) and CRCM5, developed at the University of Québec at Montréal. These modelled precipitation statistics are evaluated against three gridded observed datasets—the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP), the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), and the Africa Rainfall Climatology (ARC2)—and four reanalysis products (ECMWF ERA-Interim, NCEP/DOE Reanalysis II, NASA MERRA and NOAA-CIRES Twentieth Century Reanalysis). The two RCMs share the same dynamics from the Environment Canada GEM forecast model, but have two different physics’ packages: CanRCM4 obtains its physics from CCCma’s global atmospheric model (CanAM4), while CRCM5 shares a number of its physics modules with the limited-area version of GEM forecast model. The evaluation is focused on various daily precipitation statistics (maximum number of consecutive wet days, number of moderate and very heavy precipitation events, precipitation frequency distribution) and on the monsoon onset and retreat over the Sahel region. We find that the CRCM5 has a good representation of daily precipitation statistics over the southern Sahel, with spatial distributions close to GPCP dataset. Some differences are observed in the northern part of the Sahel, where the model is characterised by a dry bias. CanRCM4 and the ERA-Interim and MERRA reanalysis products overestimate the number of wet days over Sahel with a shift in the frequency distribution toward smaller daily precipitation amounts than in observations. Both RCMs and reanalyses have difficulties in reproducing the local onset date over the Sahel region. Nevertheless, the large-scale features of the monsoon precipitation evolution over West Africa are well reproduced by the RCMs, whereas the northern limit of the rainy bands is less accurately reproduced. Both RCMs exhibit an overall good representation of the local retreat index over the Sahel region.

Description: On the basis of a 51-year statistical analysis of reanalysis data, we propose for the first time that the positive phase of the Western Pacific (WP) pattern in the winter is linked to the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in the previous winter, and vice versa. We show that there are two possible mechanisms responsible for this interannual remote linkage. One is an Arctic mechanism. Extensive Arctic sea ice in the summer after a negative NAO acts as a bridge to the positive phase of the WP in the next winter. The other mechanism involves the tropics. An El Niño occurrence after a negative winter NAO acts as another bridge to the positive phase of the WP in the following winter. The timescale of the Arctic route is nearly decadal, whereas that of the tropical route is about 3–5 years. The tropical mechanism indicates that the NAO remotely excites an El Niño in the second half of the following year. A process perhaps responsible for the El Niño occurrence was investigated statistically. A negative NAO in the winter increases Eurasian snow cover. This anomalous snow cover then intensifies the cold air outbreak from Asia to the western tropical Pacific. This outbreak can intensify the westerly wind burst and excite El Niño in the following year. We suggest that the phase of the NAO in the winter could be a predictor of the WP in the following year.

Description: As the biggest economy in Canada, the Province of Ontario is now suffering many consequences caused by or associated with global warming, such as frequent and intense heat waves, floods, droughts, and wind gust. Planning of mitigation and adaptation strategies against the changing climate, which requires a better understanding of possible future climate outcomes over the Province in the context of global warming, is of great interest to local policy makers, stakeholders, and development practitioners. Therefore, in this study, high-resolution projections of near-surface air temperature outcomes including mean, maximum, and minimum daily temperature over Ontario are developed, aiming at investigating how the global warming would affect the local climatology of the major cities as well as the spatial patterns of air temperature over the entire Province. The PRECIS modeling system is employed to carry out regional climate ensemble simulations driven by the boundary conditions of a five-member HadCM3-based perturbed-physics ensemble (i.e., HadCM3Q0, Q3, Q10, Q13, and Q15). The ensemble simulations are then synthesized through a Bayesian hierarchical model to develop probabilistic projections of future temperature outcomes with consideration of some uncertain parameters involved in the regional climate modeling process. The results suggest that there would be a consistent increasing trend in the near-surface air temperature with time periods from 2030s to 2080s. The most likely mean temperature in next few decades (i.e., 2030s) would be [−2, 2] °C in northern Ontario, [2, 6] °C in the middle, and [6, 12] °C in the south, afterwards the mean temperature is likely to keep rising by ~ 2 °C per 30-years period. The continuous warming across the Province would drive the lowest mean temperature up to 2 °C in the north and the highest mean temperature up to 16 °C in the south. In addition, the spread of the most likely ranges of future outcomes shows a consistent widening trend from 2030s to 2080s, implying that long-term climate change is more difficult to predict than near-term change because many more uncertain or unknown factors may continue to emerge during the long-term simulation.

Description: A multi-model analysis of Atlantic multidecadal variability is performed with the following aims: to investigate the similarities to observations; to assess the strength and relative importance of the different elements of the mechanism proposed by Delworth et al. (J Clim 6:1993–2011, 1993) (hereafter D93) among coupled general circulation models (CGCMs); and to relate model differences to mean systematic error. The analysis is performed with long control simulations from ten CGCMs, with lengths ranging between 500 and 3600 years. In most models the variations of sea surface temperature (SST) averaged over North Atlantic show considerable power on multidecadal time scales, but with different periodicity. The SST variations are largest in the mid-latitude region, consistent with the short instrumental record. Despite large differences in model configurations, we find quite some consistency among the models in terms of processes. In eight of the ten models the mid-latitude SST variations are significantly correlated with fluctuations in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), suggesting a link to northward heat transport changes. Consistent with this link, the three models with the weakest AMOC have the largest cold SST bias in the North Atlantic. There is no linear relationship on decadal timescales between AMOC and North Atlantic Oscillation in the models. Analysis of the key elements of the D93 mechanisms revealed the following: Most models present strong evidence that high-latitude winter mixing precede AMOC changes. However, the regions of wintertime convection differ among models. In most models salinity-induced density anomalies in the convective region tend to lead AMOC, while temperature-induced density anomalies lead AMOC only in one model. However, analysis shows that salinity may play an overly important role in most models, because of cold temperature biases in their relevant convective regions. In most models subpolar gyre variations tend to lead AMOC changes, and this relation is strong in more than half of the models.

Description: Land use and land cover (LULC) over Africa have changed substantially over the last 60 years and this change has been proposed to affect monsoon circulation and precipitation. This study examines the uncertainties of model simulated response in the African monsoon system and Sahel precipitation due to LULC change using a set of regional model simulations with different combinations of land surface and cumulus parameterization schemes. Although the magnitude of the response covers a broad range of values, most of the simulations show a decline in Sahel precipitation due to the expansion of pasture and croplands at the expense of trees and shrubs and an increase in surface air temperature. The relationship between the model responses to LULC change and the climatologists of the control simulations is also examined. Simulations that are climatologically too dry or too wet compared to observations and reanalyses have weak response to land use change because they are in moisture or energy limited regimes respectively. The ones that lie in between have stronger response to the LULC changes, showing a more significant role in land–atmosphere interactions. Much of the change in precipitation is related to changes in circulation, particularly to the response of the intensity and latitudinal position of the African Easterly Jet, which varies with the changes in meridional surface temperature gradients. The study highlights the need for measurements of the surface fluxes across the meridional cross-section of the Sahel to evaluate models and thereby allowing human impacts such as land use change on the monsoon to be projected more realistically.

Description: In this the second of a two-part study, we examine the physical mechanisms responsible for the increasing contrast of the land–sea surface air temperature (SAT) in summertime over the Far East, as observed in recent decades and revealed in future climate projections obtained from a series of transient warming and sensitivity experiments conducted under the umbrella of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5. On a global perspective, a strengthening of land–sea SAT contrast in the transient warming simulations of coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation models is attributed to an increase in sea surface temperature (SST). However, in boreal summer, the strengthened contrast over the Far East is reproduced only by increasing atmospheric CO 2 concentration. In response to SST increase alone, the tropospheric warming over the interior of the mid- to high-latitude continents including Eurasia are weaker than those over the surrounding oceans, leading to a weakening of the land–sea SAT contrast over the Far East. Thus, the increasing contrast and associated change in atmospheric circulation over East Asia is explained by CO 2 -induced continental warming. The degree of strengthening of the land–sea SAT contrast varies in different transient warming scenarios, but is reproduced through a combination of the CO 2 -induced positive and SST-induced negative contributions to the land–sea contrast. These results imply that changes of climate patterns over the land–ocean boundary regions are sensitive to future scenarios of CO 2 concentration pathways including extreme cases.

Description: This paper investigates the reversibility of CO 2 induced climate change and in particular the potential impacts of different rates of CO 2 reduction using a coupled climate model. Atmospheric CO 2 concentration is ramped up by 0.5 %/year from the preindustrial value to 4×CO 2 and then ramped down from 2×CO 2 to 4×CO 2 with different rates. How the response of the climate system is affected by the peak atmospheric CO 2 concentration and the rate of long term decline is vital information for those considering hypothetical geoengineering options to remove CO 2 . Major components of the climate system including global mean surface air temperature and precipitation, contribution of thermal expansion to global sea level rise, loss of the Arctic sea ice, weakening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and the South Asia monsoon are analyzed. We have found no ‘tipping points’ or thresholds beyond which CO 2 induced climate change in these components become irreversible within this model under the specific scenarios. However, there are strong inertias and path-dependent hysteresis in the climate system linked through oceanic memory. Initially the strengthened global hydrological cycle accelerates further in response to a CO 2 ramp-down before weakening. Thermal expansion of the oceans continues for many decades after CO 2 concentration starts to decrease. A 0.5 %/year reduction from 4×CO 2 could see a further 25 % sea level rise. The weakening of the AMOC is reversible, but the build-up of highly saline subtropical waters during global warming drives an overshoot of the AMOC after the CO 2 ramp-down and extends the warming of the northern high latitudes by many decades. The South Asia monsoon strengthens in response to a CO 2 ramp-up marked by an increase in summer monsoon rainfall. This increase reverses rapidly following a CO 2 ramp-down, displaying an undershoot in monsoon rainfall for rapid CO 2 reductions.

Description: Large uncertainties exist concerning the impact of Greenland ice sheet melting on the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) in the future, partly due to different sensitivity of the AMOC to freshwater input in the North Atlantic among climate models. Here we analyse five projections from different coupled ocean–atmosphere models with an additional 0.1 Sv (1 Sv = 10 6 m 3 /s) of freshwater released around Greenland between 2050 and 2089. We find on average a further weakening of the AMOC at 26°N of 1.1 ± 0.6 Sv representing a 27 ± 14 % supplementary weakening in 2080–2089, as compared to the weakening relative to 2006–2015 due to the effect of the external forcing only. This weakening is lower than what has been found with the same ensemble of models in an identical experimental set-up but under recent historical climate conditions. This lower sensitivity in a warmer world is explained by two main factors. First, a tendency of decoupling is detected between the surface and the deep ocean caused by an increased thermal stratification in the North Atlantic under the effect of global warming. This induces a shoaling of ocean deep ventilation through convection hence ventilating only intermediate levels. The second important effect concerns the so-called Canary Current freshwater leakage; a process by which additionally released freshwater in the North Atlantic leaks along the Canary Current and escapes the convection zones towards the subtropical area. This leakage is increasing in a warming climate, which is a consequence of decreasing gyres asymmetry due to changes in Ekman pumping. We suggest that these modifications are related with the northward shift of the jet stream in a warmer world. For these two reasons the AMOC is less susceptible to freshwater perturbations (near the deep water formation sides) in the North Atlantic as compared to the recent historical climate conditions. Finally, we propose a bilinear model that accounts for the two former processes to give a conceptual explanation about the decreasing AMOC sensitivity due to freshwater input. Within the limit of this bilinear model, we find that 62 ± 8 % of the reduction in sensitivity is related with the changes in gyre asymmetry and freshwater leakage and 38 ± 8 % is due to the reduction in deep ocean ventilation associated with the increased stratification in the North Atlantic.

Description: Two principal modes of Northern Hemisphere (NH) wintertime blocking variability are identified to examine the possible relationships between regional blocking activities and to understand how they are linked. The first mode of NH blocking variability is characterized by regional blocking activities including the North Pacific (PA), Greenland, European, and Ural-Siberian regions. There exists dominant PA blocking associated with the negative North Pacific Oscillation (NPO) pattern. The second mode shows a zonally dipole pattern between PA and North Atlantic (AT) blockings. It is more related to AT blocking, such that there is strong coupling with the negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) pattern. Correlation analysis with major climate variability patterns revealed that both the NPO and NAO may modulate the two leading modes of NH blocking variability. Also, the NPO and Arctic Oscillation (AO) can simultaneously be associated with the blocking occurrence over both the PA and AT basins. The negative phase of the NPO (AO) is favorable for the in- phase (out-of-phase) relationship between west of (south of) PA and south of (west of) AT blocking sectors. This occurs because NH blocking occurrence is dependent on the phase of the AO, especially in the negative NPO pattern. If the NPO and AO are in phase (out of phase), NH blocking occurrence is more enhanced (weakened), in particular, having higher frequency over the Pacific and higher (lower) frequency over the Northwest Atlantic.

Description: Precipitation from the West African Monsoon (WAM) provides food security and supports the economy in the region. As a consequence of the intrinsic complexities of the WAM’s evolution, accurate simulations of the WAM and its precipitation regime, through the application of regional climate models, are challenging. We used the coupled Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) and Community Land Model (CLM) to explore impacts of radiation physics on the precipitation and dynamics of the WAM. Our results indicate that the radiation physics schemes not only produce biases in radiation fluxes impacting radiative forcing, but more importantly, result in large bias in precipitation of the WAM. Furthermore, the different radiation schemes led to variations in the meridional gradient of surface temperature between the north that is the Sahara desert and the south Guinean coastline. Climate diagnostics indicated that the changes in the meridional gradient of surface temperature affect the position and strength of the African Easterly Jet as well as the low-level monsoonal inflow from the Gulf of Guinea. The net result was that each radiation scheme produced differences in the WAM precipitation regime both spatially and in intensity. Such considerable variances in the WAM precipitation regime and dynamics, resulting from radiation representations, likely have strong feedbacks within the climate system and so have inferences when it comes to aspects of predicted climate change both for the region and globally.

Description: Recent work has shown that the vertical structure of the Arctic polar vortex during different types of sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events can be very distinctive. Specifically, SSWs can be classified into polar vortex displacement events or polar vortex splitting events. This paper aims to study the Arctic stratosphere during such events, with a focus on the stratopause using the Modern Era-Restrospective analysis for Research and Applications reanalysis data set. The reanalysis dataset is compared against two independent satellite reconstructions for validation purposes. During vortex displacement events, the stratopause temperature and pressure exhibit a wave-1 structure and are in quadrature whereas during vortex splitting events they exhibit a wave-2 structure. For both types of SSW the temperature anomalies at the stratopause are shown to be generated by ageostrophic vertical motions. Transformed Eulerian mean diagnostics are used to show differences in the planetary wave activity between displacement and splitting events. The convergence of Eliassen-Palm flux, which leads to SSWs is longer for displacement events and a persistent mesospheric Eliassen-Palm flux divergence can be observed about 20 days after displacement events. Finally, although this work focuses on the stratopause at high latitudes, associated observations of the equatorial middle atmosphere are also examined to explore links between the equator and polar evolution during SSWs.

Description: Climatological high resolution coupled climate model simulations for the maritime continent have been carried out using the regional climate model (RegCM) version 3 and the finite volume coastal ocean model (FVCOM) specifically designed to resolve regions characterized by complex geometry and bathymetry. The RegCM3 boundary forcing is provided by the EMCWF-ERA40 re-analysis. FVCOM is embedded in the Global MITgcm which provides boundary forcing. The domain of the coupled regional model covers the entire South China Sea with its through-flow, the entire Indonesian archipelago with the Indonesian through-flow (ITF) and includes a large region in the western Pacific and eastern Indian oceans. The coupled model is able to provide stable and realistic climatological simulations for a specific decade of atmospheric–oceanic variables without flux correction. The major focus of this work is on oceanic properties. First, the coupled simulation is assessed against ocean-only simulations carried out under two different sets of air–sea heat fluxes. The first set, provided by the MITgcm, is proved to be grossly deficient as the heat fluxes are evaluated by a two-dimensional, zonally averaged atmosphere and the simulated SST have anomalous cold biases. Hence the MITgcm fluxes are discarded. The second set, the NCEP re-analysis heat fluxes, produces a climatological evolution of the SST with an average cold bias of ~−0.8 °C. The coupling eliminates the cold bias and the coupled SST evolution is in excellent agreement with the analogous evolution in the SODA re-analysis data. The detailed comparison of oceanic circulation properties with the International Nusantara Stratification and Transport observations shows that the coupled simulation produces the best estimate of the total ITF transport through the Makassar strait while the transports of three ocean-only simulations are all underestimated. The annual cycle of the transport is also very well reproduced. The coupling also considerably improves the vertical thermal structure of the Makassar cross section in the upper layer affected by the heat fluxes. On the other hand, the coupling is relatively ineffective in improving the precipitation fields even though the coupled simulation captures reasonably well the precipitation annual cycle at three land stations in different latitudes.

Description: Convectively coupled equatorial waves (CCEWs) are major sources of tropical day-to-day variability. The majority of CCEWs-related studies for the past decade or so have based their analyses, in one form or another, on the Fourier-based space–time spectral analysis method developed by Wheeler and Kiladis (WK). Like other atmospheric and oceanic phenomena, however, CCEWs exhibit pronounced nonstationarity, which the conventional Fourier-based method has difficulty elucidating. The purpose of this study is to introduce an analysis method that is able to describe the time-varying spectral features of CCEWs. The method is based on a transform, referred to as the combined Fourier–wavelet transform (CFWT), defined as a combination of the Fourier transform in space (longitude) and wavelet transform in time, providing an instantaneous space–time spectrum at any given time. The elaboration made on how to display the CFWT spectrum in a manner analogous to the conventional method (i.e., as a function of zonal wavenumber and frequency) and how to estimate the background noise spectrum renders the method more practically feasible. As a practical example, this study analyzes 3-hourly cloud archive user service (CLAUS) cloudiness data for 23 years. The CFWT and WK methods exhibit a remarkable level of agreement in the distributions of climatological-mean space–time spectra over a wide range of space–time scales ranging in time from several hours to several tens of days, indicating the instantaneous CFWT spectrum provides a reasonable snapshot. The usefulness of the capability to localize space–time spectra in time is demonstrated through examinations of the annual cycle, interannual variability, and a case study.

Description: Rainfall over eastern Africa (10°S–10°N; 35°E–50°E) is bimodal, with seasonal maxima during the "long rains" of March–April–May (MAM) and the "short rains" of October–November–December (OND). Below average precipitation during consecutive long and short rains seasons over eastern Africa can have devastating long-term impacts on water availability and agriculture. Here, we examine the forcing of drought during consecutive long and short rains seasons over eastern Africa by Indo-Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The forcing of eastern Africa precipitation and circulation by SSTs is tested using ten ensemble simulations of a global weather forecast model forced by 1950–2010 observed global SSTs. Since the 1980s, Indo-Pacific SSTs have forced more frequent droughts spanning consecutive long and short rains seasons over eastern Africa. The increased frequency of dry conditions is linked to warming SSTs over the Indo-west Pacific and to a lesser degree to Pacific Decadal Variability. During MAM, long-term warming of tropical west Pacific SSTs from 1950–2010 has forced statistically significant precipitation reductions over eastern Africa. The warming west Pacific SSTs have forced changes in the regional lower tropospheric circulation by weakening the Somali Jet, which has reduced moisture and rainfall over the Horn of Africa. During OND, reductions in precipitation over recent decades are oftentimes overshadowed by strong year-to-year precipitation variability forced by the Indian Ocean Dipole and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation.