How well do state-of-the-art atmosphere-ocean general circulation models reproduce atmospheric teleconnection patterns?

Abstract

A B S T R A C TThis article evaluates the ability of state-of-the-art climate models to reproduce the low-frequency variability of the mid-tropospheric winter flow of the Northern Hemisphere in terms of atmospheric teleconnection patterns. Therefore, multi-model simulations for present-day conditions, performed for the 4th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have been analysed and compared with re-analysis data sets. The spatial patterns of atmospheric teleconnections are reproduced reasonably by most of the models. The comparison of coupled with atmosphere-only runs confirmed that a better representation of the forcing by sea surface temperatures has the potential to slightly improve the representation of only wave train-like patterns. Due to internally generated climate variability, the models are not able to reproduce the observed temporal behaviour. Insights into the dynamical reasons for the limited skill of climate models in reproducing teleconnections have been obtained by studying the relation between major teleconnections and zonal wind variability patterns. About half of the models are able to reproduce the observed relationship. For these cases, the quality of simulated teleconnection patterns is largely determined by the quality of zonal wind variability patterns. Therefore, improvements of simulated eddy-mean flow interaction have the potential to improve the atmospheric teleconnections.

Nonlinear response of mid-latitude weather to the changing Arctic

“…These limitations reflect the nonlinearity of climate system dynamics, and the study of linkages remains an unfinished puzzle. Handorf and Dethloff 87 report that most current state-of-the-science climate models cannot yet reproduce observed changes in atmospheric teleconnection patterns because of shortcomings in capturing realistic natural variability as well as relationships between the most important teleconnections and patterns of temperature change. Until models are able to realistically reproduce these relationships, an understanding of subarctic climate variability and weather patterns in a warming world will remain a challenge.…”

Impact of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on the Western Pacific (WP) pattern in the following winter through Arctic sea ice and ENSO. Part II: multi-model evaluation of the NAO–ENSO linkage

“…In CMIP3, there are considerable model dependencies of the spatial patterns and time scales of both the NAO and ENSO. For example, the southern part of the center of activity of the NAO in the CMIP3 models has a general tendency to be displaced westward (Stoner et al 2009;Handorf and Dethloff 2012). In the case of ENSO, some of the CMIP3 models reproduce the features of the observed ENSO transitions, but most models fail to reproduce transitional processes during both the warm and cold ENSO phases (Ohba et al 2010).…”

Teleconnection Patterns Appearing in the Streamfunction Field

“…Recently, however, by considering the fact that the major patterns like the North Atlantic Oscillation pattern (NAO) have a dipole structure, some studies (Strong and Davis 2008;Woolings et al 2010;Atanasiadis et al 2010;Handorf and Dethloff 2012) relate them to the variability of the jet stream. These studies mainly obtained patterns by conducting EOF (Empirical Orthogonal Function) analysis on the zonal wind (e.g., Athanasiadis et al 2010).…”