The Impact of North Atlantic–Arctic Multidecadal Variability on Northern Hemisphere Surface Air Temperature

Семенов, В. А.; Latif, Mojib; Dommenget, Dietmar; Keenlyside, Noel; Strehz, Alexander; Martin, Thomas; Park, Wonsun

doi:10.1175/2010jcli3347.1

Cited by 137 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This view is supported by model results that relate the variability of the global-mean SST to North Atlantic thermohaline circulation (30,31,35) and by the existence of an AMO-like variability in control runs without anthropogenic forcing (28). If this conclusion is correct, then the following interpretation follows: The anthropogenic warming started after the mid-19th century of Industrial Revolution.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Using data to attribute episodes of warming and cooling in instrumental records

Tung

Zhou

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

153

109

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The observed global-warming rate has been nonuniform, and the cause of each episode of slowing in the expected warming rate is the subject of intense debate. To explain this, nonrecurrent events have commonly been invoked for each episode separately. After reviewing evidence in both the latest global data (HadCRUT4) and the longest instrumental record, Central England Temperature, a revised picture is emerging that gives a consistent attribution for each multidecadal episode of warming and cooling in recent history, and suggests that the anthropogenic global warming trends might have been overestimated by a factor of two in the second half of the 20th century. A recurrent multidecadal oscillation is found to extend to the preindustrial era in the 353-y Central England Temperature and is likely an internal variability related to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), possibly caused by the thermohaline circulation variability. The perspective of a long record helps in quantifying the contribution from internal variability, especially one with a period so long that it is often confused with secular trends in shorter records. Solar contribution is found to be minimal for the second half of the 20th century and less than 10% for the first half. The underlying net anthropogenic warming rate in the industrial era is found to have been steady since 1910 at 0.07-0.08°C/decade, with superimposed AMO-related ups and downs that included the early 20th century warming, the cooling of the 1960s and 1970s, the accelerated warming of the 1980s and 1990s, and the recent slowing of the warming rates. Quantitatively, the recurrent multidecadal internal variability, often underestimated in attribution studies, accounts for 40% of the observed recent 50-y warming trend. T he world's longest instrumental record of temperature, Central England Temperature (CET), began to be collected in 1659 in an area enclosed by Lancashire, London, and Bristol, a few years after the invention of sealed liquid thermometers. It is the only instrumental record that extends back to the Little Ice Age (LIA), a period of cold climate in Europe, and the time of the Maunder Minimum, when sunspots vanished almost entirely for 70 y (1). The record then covers several subsequent episodes of natural and anthropogenic warming of multidecadal durations. Manley (2) painstakingly compiled most of the early monthly CET series, and Parker et al. (3) the daily data from 1772. Both are updated to present by the Met Office Hadley Centre. This record has previously been analyzed to study interannual and interdecadal variability up to the 25-y period (4); interannual winter variability and its association with solar forcing (5); and its variance at interannual, interdecadal timescales compared with a general circulation model output (6). The lower frequency portion of the record, longer than 50 y, has not been adequately analyzed, the difficulty being that even this long record is not long enough to avoid the cone of influence from the edges of the time series. Her...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Using data to attribute episodes of warming and cooling in instrumental records

Tung

Zhou

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

153

109

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“…The circulation changes accompanying the shift toward the warm polarity of the ENSO cycle (or Pacific Decadal Oscillation) (21) (5-7). In a similar manner, the strengthening of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic from the early 1970s onward favored a trend in the positive polarity of the North Atlantic Oscillation and warmer winters over high latitudes of Eurasia (22,23). Over such short time intervals and restricted spatial domains, the variability generated by the internal dynamics of the climate system can overwhelm the anthropogenically forced variability (24).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Simulated versus observed patterns of warming over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere continents during the cold season

Wallace

Smoliak

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

154

148

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A suite of the historical simulations run with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4) models forced by greenhouse gases, aerosols, stratospheric ozone depletion, and volcanic eruptions and a second suite of simulations forced by increasing CO 2 concentrations alone are compared with observations for the reference interval 1965-2000. Surface air temperature trends are disaggregated by boreal cold (November-April) versus warm (May-October) seasons and by high latitude northern (N: 40°-90°N) versus southern (S: 60°S-40°N) domains. A dynamical adjustment is applied to remove the component of the coldseason surface air temperature trends (over land areas poleward of 40°N) that are attributable to changing atmospheric circulation patterns. The model simulations do not simulate the full extent of the wintertime warming over the high-latitude Northern Hemisphere continents during the later 20th century, much of which was dynamically induced. Expressed as fractions of the concurrent trend in global-mean sea surface temperature, the relative magnitude of the dynamically induced wintertime warming over domain N in the observations, the simulations with multiple forcings, and the runs forced by the buildup of greenhouse gases only is 7∶2∶1, and roughly comparable to the relative magnitude of the concurrent sea-level pressure trends. These results support the notion that the enhanced wintertime warming over high northern latitudes from 1965 to 2000 was mainly a reflection of unforced variability of the coupled climate system. Some of the simulations exhibit an enhancement of the warming along the Arctic coast, suggestive of exaggerated feedbacks.spatial patterns of warming | climate model diagnostics | dynamically-induced warming | polar amplification

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“…Compo and Sardeshmukh (2009) found that the recent worldwide land warming has a significant component originating from warmer oceans rather than being a direct effect of increasing greenhouse gases. Semenov et al (2010) estimated the AMO contribution to post 1970 global warming to be 0.24°C. Tung and Zhou (2013) found that neglecting the AMO leads to an overestimation of the global mean anthropogenic warming trend during the second half of the twentieth century by about a factor of two.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imprint of the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation and Pacific decadal oscillation on southwestern US climate: past, present, and future

et al. 2013

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The surface air temperature increase in the southwestern United States was much larger during the last few decades than the increase in the global mean. While the global temperature increased by about 0.5°C from 1975 to 2000, the southwestern US temperature increased by about 2°C. If such an enhanced warming persisted for the next few decades, the southwestern US would suffer devastating consequences. To identify major drivers of southwestern climate change we perform a multiple-linear regression of the past 100 years of the southwestern US temperature and precipitation. We find that in the early twentieth century the warming was dominated by a positive phase of the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) with minor contributions from increasing solar irradiance and concentration of greenhouse gases. The late twentieth century warming was about equally influenced by increasing concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) and a positive phase of the AMO. The current southwestern US drought is associated with a near maximum AMO index occurring nearly simultaneously with a minimum in the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) index. A similar situation occurred in mid-1950s when precipitation reached its minimum within the instrumental records. If future atmospheric concentrations of GHGs increase according to the IPCC scenarios (Solomon et al. in Climate change 2007: working group I. The Physical Science Basis, Cambridge, 996 pp, 2007), climate models project a fast rate of southwestern warming accompanied by devastating droughts (Seager et al. in Science 316:1181-1184, 2007 Williams et al. in Nat Clim Chang, 2012). However, the current climate models have not been able to predict the behavior of the AMO and PDO indices. The regression model does support the climate models (CMIP3 and CMIP5 AOGCMs) projections of a much warmer and drier southwestern US only if the AMO changes its 1,000 years cyclic behavior and instead continues to rise close to its 1975-2000 rate. If the AMO continues its quasi-cyclic behavior the US SW temperature should remain stable and the precipitation should significantly increase during the next few decades.

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The Impact of North Atlantic–Arctic Multidecadal Variability on Northern Hemisphere Surface Air Temperature

Abstract: The 20

Cited by 137 publications

References 33 publications

Using data to attribute episodes of warming and cooling in instrumental records

Using data to attribute episodes of warming and cooling in instrumental records

Simulated versus observed patterns of warming over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere continents during the cold season

Imprint of the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation and Pacific decadal oscillation on southwestern US climate: past, present, and future

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