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El Niño teleconnections in CMIP5 models

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Abstract

Teleconnections associated with warm El Niño/southern oscillation (ENSO) events in 20 climate model intercomparison project 5 (CMIP5) models have been compared with reanalysis observations. Focus has been placed on compact time and space indices, which can be assigned a specific statistical confidence. Nearly all of the models have surface temperature, precipitation and 250 hPa geopotential height departures in the Tropics that are in good agreement with the observations. Most of the models also have realistic anomalies of Northern Hemisphere near-surface temperature, precipitation and 500 hPa geopotential height. Model skill for these variables is significantly related to the ability of a model to accurately simulate Tropical 250 hPa height departures. Additionally, most models have realistic temperature and precipitation anomalies over North America, which are linked to a model’s ability to simulate Tropical 250 hPa and Northern Hemisphere 500 hPa height departures. The skills of temperature and precipitation departures over the Northern Hemisphere and North America are associated with the ability to realistically simulate realistic ENSO frequency and length. Neither horizontal nor vertical resolution differences for either the model atmosphere or ocean are significantly related at the 95 % level to variations in El Niño simulation quality. Overall, recent versions of earlier models have improved in their ability to simulate El Niño teleconnections. For instance, the average model skills of temperature and precipitation for the Tropics, Northern Hemisphere and North America for 11 CMIP5 models are all larger than those for prior versions.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by NSF grant ATM0733698. NCEP/NCAR_Reanalysis 2 data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, CO, USA, from their Web site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/. ERA-40 and ERA-Int data were kindly provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting. I acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP. The US Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support for CMIP and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. Finally, I heartily thank the many climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output.

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  1. Atmospheric Science Program, Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    Bryan C. Weare

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Weare, B.C. El Niño teleconnections in CMIP5 models. Clim Dyn 41, 2165–2177 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1537-3

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