The Importance of Accounting for the North Atlantic Oscillation When Applying Observational Constraints to European Climate Projections

Autor: Andrew P. Ballinger, Andrew P. Schurer, Christopher H. O’Reilly, Gabriele C. Hegerl
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 50, Iss 16, Pp n/a-n/a (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1944-8007
0094-8276
DOI: 10.1029/2023GL103431
Popis: Abstract Variability in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) has contributed to the recent multidecadal trends observed in European climate, especially to trends in winter precipitation over Northern Europe. However, the current generation of coupled climate models struggle to reproduce the NAO's contribution to multidecadal trends, which has important implications for deriving constraints based on the comparison of observed and modeled trends. An observational constraint based on attribution results, both with and without the contribution of variability associated with the NAO, is applied to projections of Northern European precipitation and temperature, and observed NAO variability is shown to lead to a constraint that overestimates future forced changes. Only after removing the NAO variability is the observed climate change consistent with model simulations, and a tighter, unbiased observational constraint based on the forced signal (without the NAO) can be applied to future projections.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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