Joint projections of North Pacific sea surface temperature from different global climate models

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 451-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Beltrán ◽  
Bruno Sansó ◽  
Ricardo T. Lemos ◽  
Roy Mendelssohn
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiying Peng ◽  
Quanliang Chen ◽  
Shijie Zhou ◽  
Ping Huang

AbstractSeasonal forecasts at lead times of 1–12 months for sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (SSTAs) in the offshore area of China are a considerable challenge for climate prediction in China. Previous research suggests that a model-based analog forecasting (MAF) method based on the simulations of coupled global climate models provide skillful climate forecasts of tropical Indo-Pacific SSTAs. This MAF method selects the model-simulated cases close to the observed initial state as a model-analog ensemble, and then uses the subsequent evolution of the SSTA to generate the forecasts. In this study, the MAF method is applied to the offshore area of China (0°–45°N, 105°–135°E) based on the simulations of 23 models from phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) for the period 1981–2010. By optimizing the key factors in the MAF method, we suggest that the optimal initial field for the analog criteria should be concentrated in the western North Pacific. The multi-model ensemble of the optimized MAF prediction using these 23 CMIP6 models shows anomaly correlation coefficients exceeding 0.6 at the 3-month lead time, which is much improved relative to previous SST-initialized hindcasts and appears practical for operational forecasting.


2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (23) ◽  
pp. 6203-6209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Lienert ◽  
John C. Fyfe ◽  
William J. Merryfield

Abstract This study evaluates the ability of global climate models to reproduce observed tropical influences on North Pacific Ocean sea surface temperature variability. In an ensemble of climate models, the study finds that the simulated North Pacific response to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forcing is systematically delayed relative to the observed response because of winter and spring mixed layers in the North Pacific that are too deep and air–sea feedbacks that are too weak. Model biases in mixed layer depth and air–sea feedbacks are also associated with a model mean ENSO-related signal in the North Pacific whose amplitude is overestimated by about 30%. The study also shows that simulated North Pacific variability has more power at lower frequencies than is observed because of model errors originating in the tropics and extratropics. Implications of these results for predictions on seasonal, decadal, and longer time scales are discussed.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (17) ◽  
pp. 4619-4636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Jamison ◽  
Sergey Kravtsov

Abstract This study evaluates the ability of the global climate models that compose phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) to simulate intrinsic decadal variations detected in the observed North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) record via multichannel singular spectrum analysis (M-SSA). M-SSA identifies statistically significant signals in the observed SSTs, with time scales of 5–10, 10–15, and 15–30 yr; all of these signals have distinctive spatiotemporal characteristics and are consistent with previous studies. Many of the CMIP3 twentieth-century simulations are characterized by quasi-oscillatory behavior within one or more of the three observationally motivated frequency bands specified above; however, only a fraction of these models also capture the spatial patterns of the observed signals. The models best reproduce the observed quasi-regular SST variations in the high-frequency, 5–10-yr band, while the observed signals in the intermediate, 10–15-yr band have turned out to be most difficult to capture. A handful of models capture the patterns and, sometimes, the spectral character of the observed variability in the two or three bands simultaneously. These results imply that the decadal prediction skill of the models considered—to be estimated within the CMIP5 framework—would be stratified according to the models’ performance in capturing the time scales and patterns of the observed decadal SST variations. They also warrant further research into the dynamical causes of the observed and simulated decadal variability, as well as into apparent differences in the representation of these variations by individual CMIP3 models.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 500
Author(s):  
Lianwei Li ◽  
Yangfeng Xu ◽  
Cunjin Xue ◽  
Yuxuan Fu ◽  
Yuanyu Zhang

It is important to consider where, when, and how the evolution of sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) plays significant roles in regional or global climate changes. In the comparison of where and when, there is a great challenge in clearly describing how SSTA evolves in space and time. In light of the evolution from generation, through development, and to the dissipation of SSTA, this paper proposes a novel approach to identifying an evolution of SSTA in space and time from a time-series of a raster dataset. This method, called PoAIES, includes three key steps. Firstly, a cluster-based method is enhanced to explore spatiotemporal clusters of SSTA, and each cluster of SSTA at a time snapshot is taken as a snapshot object of SSTA. Secondly, the spatiotemporal topologies of snapshot objects of SSTA at successive time snapshots are used to link snapshot objects of SSTA into an evolution object of SSTA, which is called a process object. Here, a linking threshold is automatically determined according to the overlapped areas of the snapshot objects, and only those snapshot objects that meet the specified linking threshold are linked together into a process object. Thirdly, we use a graph-based model to represent a process object of SSTA. A node represents a snapshot object of SSTA, and an edge represents an evolution between two snapshot objects. Using a number of child nodes from an edge’s parent node and a number of parent nodes from the edge’s child node, a type of edge (an evolution relationship) is identified, which shows its development, splitting, merging, or splitting/merging. Finally, an experiment on a simulated dataset is used to demonstrate the effectiveness and the advantages of PoAIES, and a real dataset of satellite-SSTA is used to verify the rationality of PoAIES with the help of ENSO’s relevant knowledge, which may provide new references for global change research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (19) ◽  
pp. 6271-6284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaofan Li ◽  
Zeng-Zhen Hu ◽  
Ping Liang ◽  
Jieshun Zhu

Abstract In this work, the roles of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the variability and predictability of the Pacific–North American (PNA) pattern and precipitation in North America in winter are examined. It is noted that statistically about 29% of the variance of PNA is linearly linked to ENSO, while the remaining 71% of the variance of PNA might be explained by other processes, including atmospheric internal dynamics and sea surface temperature variations in the North Pacific. The ENSO impact is mainly meridional from the tropics to the mid–high latitudes, while a major fraction of the non-ENSO variability associated with PNA is confined in the zonal direction from the North Pacific to the North American continent. Such interferential connection on PNA as well as on North American climate variability may reflect a competition between local internal dynamical processes (unpredictable fraction) and remote forcing (predictable fraction). Model responses to observed sea surface temperature and model forecasts confirm that the remote forcing is mainly associated with ENSO and it is the major source of predictability of PNA and winter precipitation in North America.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document