Impacts of Atlantic multidecadal variability on the tropical Pacific: a multi-model study

Open Access

Abstract

11 pages, 6 figures, supplementary information https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-021-00188-5.-- Data availability; The data generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author YRR on reasonable request ; Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) has been linked to the observed slowdown of global warming over 1998–2012 through its impact on the tropical Pacific. Given the global importance of tropical Pacific variability, better understanding this Atlantic–Pacific teleconnection is key for improving climate predictions, but the robustness and strength of this link are uncertain. Analyzing a multi-model set of sensitivity experiments, we find that models differ by a factor of 10 in simulating the amplitude of the Equatorial Pacific cooling response to observed AMV warming. The inter-model spread is mainly driven by different amounts of moist static energy injection from the tropical Atlantic surface into the upper troposphere. We reduce this inter-model uncertainty by analytically correcting models for their mean precipitation biases and we quantify that, following an observed 0.26 °C AMV warming, the equatorial Pacific cools by 0.11 °C with an inter-model standard deviation of 0.03 °C ; Y.R.-R. was founded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program in the framework of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant INADEC (Grant agreement 800154). E.M.-C. acknowledges funding from the European Commission's Horizon 2020 projects PRIMAVERA (Grant Agreement 641727). X.L. has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement H2020-MSCA-COFUND-2016-754433. A.B. and D.N. acknowledge funding from the European Commission's Horizon 2020 project EUCP (Grant agreement 776613). F.C. and G.D. were supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Collaborative Research EaSM2 Grant OCE-1243015 to NCAR and by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office under the Climate Variability and Predictability Program Grant NA13OAR4310138. NCAR is a major facility sponsored by the US NSF under Cooperative Agreement 1852977. [.] R.E., N.D., L.H., and D.S. were supported by the Met Office Hadley Center 522 Climate Program funded by BEIS and Defra and by the European Commission Horizon 2020 EUCP 523 project (GA 776613). J.L.-P. was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program in the framework of the PRIMAVERA project (Grant Agreement 641727). J.R. and D.H. were funded by NERC via NCAS and the ACSIS project (NE/N018001/1), and JR was also funded by the NERC SMURPHS project (NE/N006054/1). M.M.-R. was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program in the framework of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant FESTIVAL (Grant agreement 797236). E.T. has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 748750 (SPFireSD project) ; With the funding support of the 'Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence' accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S), of the Spanish Research Agency (AEI) ; Peer reviewed