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Interdecadal change in the Northern Hemisphere seasonal climate prediction skill: part I. The leading forced mode of atmospheric circulation

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Abstract

Using observations and 1-month lead hindcast data from six coupled atmosphere–ocean climate models, this study investigates the interdecadal change in the leading maximum covariance analysis mode (MCA1) of atmospheric circulation in response to the changes in the El Niño and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) occurred around late 1970s. We focus on boreal winter climate variability and predictability over the North Pacific–North American (NPNA) region using December–January–February prediction initiated from November 1st in the period of 1960–1980 (P1) and 1981–2001 (P2). Observed analysis reveals that ENSO variability, the related tropical convective activity, and thus the MCA1 are considerably enhanced from P1 to P2. As a result, surface climate anomalies over the NPNA are more significantly correlated with the MCA1 in P2 than P1, particularly over North America. The six coupled models and their multi-model ensemble not only are capable of capturing the interdecadal change of the MCA1 and its relationship with surface air temperature and precipitation over the NPNA regions but also have significantly higher forecast skills for the MCA1 and the surface climate anomalies in P2 than P1. However, models have systematic biases in the spatial distribution of the MCA1. It is demonstrated that the interdecadal change in the MCA1 should contribute to the improved forecast skill of the NPNA climate during recent epoch.

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Acknowledgments

This research was jointly funded by National Natural Sciences Fundation of China (Grant 41105037) and by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Lee and Ha were supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) through a Global Research Laboratory (GRL) grant (MEST 2011-0021927). This work was partially supported by the APEC Climate Center (APCC) international research project and the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-13) under the grant agreement n. 303208 (CLIMITS project) and under the grant agreement n. 308378 (SPECS project). We are grateful to the two reviewers for their helpful suggestions on improving our paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    XiaoJing Jia

  2. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modelling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    XiaoJing Jia

  3. Pusan National University, Busan, 609-735, Korea

    June-Yi Lee & Kyung-Ja Ha

  4. Atmospheric Numerical Weather Prediction Research, Environment Canada, Dorval, QC, Canada

    Hai Lin

  5. Agenzia Nazionale per le nuove Tecnologie, l’energia e lo sviluppo, economico sostenibile, Rome, Italy

    Andrea Alessandri

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  1. XiaoJing Jia
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  2. June-Yi Lee
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  3. Hai Lin
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  4. Andrea Alessandri
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  5. Kyung-Ja Ha
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Correspondence to June-Yi Lee.

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Jia, X., Lee, JY., Lin, H. et al. Interdecadal change in the Northern Hemisphere seasonal climate prediction skill: part I. The leading forced mode of atmospheric circulation. Clim Dyn 43, 1595–1609 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1988-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1988-1

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