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Reconciling observed and modeled temperature and precipitation trends over Europe by adjusting for circulation variability
Author(s) -
Saffioti Claudio,
Fischer Erich M.,
Scherrer Simon C.,
Knutti Reto
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 - 10.1002/2016gl069802
Subject(s) - precipitation , climatology , environmental science , coupled model intercomparison project , atmospheric circulation , atmospheric sciences , climate change , mean radiant temperature , general circulation model , meteorology , geography , oceanography , geology
Europe experienced a pronounced winter cooling of about −0.37°C/decade in the period 1989–2012, in contrast to the strong warming simulated by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 multimodel average during the same period. Even more pronounced discrepancies between observed and simulated short‐term trends are found at the local scale, e.g., a strong winter cooling over Switzerland and a pronounced reduction in precipitation along the coast of Norway. We show that monthly sea level pressure variability accounts for much of the short‐term variations of temperature over most of the domain and of precipitation in certain regions. Removing the effect of atmospheric circulation through a regression approach reconciles the observed temperature trends over Europe and Switzerland and the precipitation trend along the coast of Norway with the corresponding multimodel mean trends.