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La Plata basin precipitation variability in spring: role of remote SST forcing as simulated by GCM experiments

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Abstract

An ensemble of nine experiments with the same interannually varying sea surface temperature (SST), as boundary forcing, and different initial conditions is used to investigate the role of tropical oceans in modulating precipitation variability in the region of La Plata Basin (LPB). The results from the ensemble are compared with a twentieth-century experiment performed with a coupled ocean-atmosphere model, sharing the same atmospheric component. A rotated empirical orthogonal functions analysis of South America precipitation shows that the dominant mode of variability in spring is realistically captured in both experiments. Its principal component (RPC1) correlated with global SST and atmospheric fields identifies the pattern related to El Niño Southern Oscillation and its large-scale teleconnections. Overall the pattern is well simulated in the tropical southern Pacific Ocean, mainly in the ensemble, but it is absent or too weak in other oceanic areas. The coupled model experiment shows a more realistic correlation in the subtropical South Atlantic where air-sea interactions contribute to the relationship between LPB precipitation and SST. The correspondence between model and data is much improved when the composite analysis of SST and atmospheric fields is done over the ensemble members having an RPC1 in agreement with the observations: the improvement relies on avoiding climate noise by averaging only over members that are statistically similar. Furthermore, the result suggests the presence of a high level of uncertainty due to internal atmospheric variability. The analysis of some individual years selected from the model and data RPC1 comparison reveals interesting differences among rainy springs in LPB. For example, 1982, which corresponds to a strong El Niño year, represents a clean case with a distinct wave train propagating from the central Pacific and merging with another one from the eastern tropical south Indian Ocean. The year 2003 is an example of a rainy spring in LPB not directly driven by remote SST forcing. In this case the internal variability has a dominant role, as the model is not able to reproduce the correct local precipitation pattern.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement No. 212492 (CLARIS LPB. A Europe-South America Network for Climate Change Assessment and Impact Studies in La Plata Basin). Dr AF Carril and Dr CG Menéndez were partially supported by PIP 112-200801-01788 (CONICET, Argentina) and PICT 2008-00237 (FONCYT, Argentina). The Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, and Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea through the project GEMINA is gratefully acknowledged for the support to Dr A Cherchi. Dr L Zamboni was partially supported by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding through the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Office of Science, U.S. Dept. of Energy, under Contract # DE-AC02-06CH11357.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro Euromediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Viale Aldo Moro 44, 40127, Bologna, Italy

    Annalisa Cherchi

  2. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y de la Atmósfera (CIMA), CONICET-UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Andrea F. Carril & Claudio G. Menéndez

  3. Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y los Océanos (DCAO), FCEN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Andrea F. Carril & Claudio G. Menéndez

  4. UMI IFAECI/CNRS, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Andrea F. Carril & Claudio G. Menéndez

  5. Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA

    Laura Zamboni

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  1. Annalisa Cherchi
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  2. Andrea F. Carril
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  4. Laura Zamboni
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Correspondence to Annalisa Cherchi.

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Cherchi, A., Carril, A.F., Menéndez, C.G. et al. La Plata basin precipitation variability in spring: role of remote SST forcing as simulated by GCM experiments. Clim Dyn 42, 219–236 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1768-y

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