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Natural climate variability and teleconnections to precipitation over the Pacific‐North American region in CMIP3 and CMIP5 models
Author(s) -
Polade Suraj D.,
Gershunov Alexander,
Cayan Daniel R.,
Dettinger Michael D.,
Pierce David W.
Publication year - 2013
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/grl.50491
Subject(s) - teleconnection , climatology , precipitation , coupled model intercomparison project , climate model , context (archaeology) , environmental science , climate change , natural (archaeology) , mode (computer interface) , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , geology , geography , oceanography , paleontology , computer science , operating system
Natural climate variability will continue to be an important aspect of future regional climate even in the midst of long‐term secular changes. Consequently, the ability of climate models to simulate major natural modes of variability and their teleconnections provides important context for the interpretation and use of climate change projections. Comparisons reported here indicate that the CMIP5 generation of global climate models shows significant improvements in simulations of key Pacific climate mode and their teleconnections to North America compared to earlier CMIP3 simulations. The performance of 14 models with simulations in both the CMIP3 and CMIP5 archives are assessed using singular value decomposition analysis of simulated and observed winter Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and concurrent precipitation over the contiguous United States and northwestern Mexico. Most of the models reproduce basic features of the key natural mode and their teleconnections, albeit with notable regional deviations from observations in both SST and precipitation. Increasing horizontal resolution in the CMIP5 simulations is an important, but not a necessary, factor in the improvement from CMIP3 to CMIP5.