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Atlantic near‐term climate variability and the role of a resolved Gulf Stream
Author(s) -
Siqueira Leo,
Kirtman Ben P.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2016gl068694
Subject(s) - predictability , climatology , climate change , environmental science , climate state , term (time) , context (archaeology) , climate model , climate system , climate commitment , greenhouse gas , transient climate simulation , sea surface temperature , global warming , effects of global warming , oceanography , geography , geology , physics , quantum mechanics , archaeology
There is a continually increasing demand for near‐term (i.e., lead times up to a couple of decades) climate information. This demand is partly driven by the need to have robust forecasts and is partly driven by the need to assess how much of the ongoing climate change is due to natural variability and how much is due to anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases or other external factors. Here we discuss results from a set of state‐of‐the‐art climate model experiments in comparison with observational estimates that show that an assessment of predictability requires models that capture the variability of major oceanic fronts, which are, at best, poorly resolved and may even be absent in the near‐term prediction of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change class models. This is the first time that air‐sea interactions associated with resolved Gulf Stream sea surface temperature have been identified in the context of a state‐of‐the‐art global coupled climate model with inferred near‐term predictability.