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Diverse influences of spring Arctic Oscillation on the following winter El Niño–Southern Oscillation in CMIP5 models

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Abstract

This study evaluates the ability of 35 climate models, which participate in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) historical climate simulations, in reproducing the connection between boreal spring Arctic Oscillation (AO) and its following winter El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The spring AO–winter ENSO correlations range from − 0.41 to 0.44 among the 35 models for the period of 1958–2005. Ensemble means of the models with positive and negative AO–ENSO correlations both show strong spring sea surface temperature (SST) cooling in the subtropical North Pacific during a positive phase of spring AO, which is conducive to occurrence of a La Niña event in the following winter. However, the models with positive AO–ENSO relations produce a pronounced spring cyclonic anomaly over the subtropical northwestern Pacific and westerly anomalies over the tropical western Pacific (TWP). These westerly wind anomalies bring SST warming and positive precipitation anomalies in the tropical central-eastern Pacific (TCEP) during the following summer, which would maintain and develop into the following winter that support an El Niño-like pattern in the TCEP via a positive air-sea feedback mechanism. By contrast, the models with negative AO–ENSO connections fail to reproduce the spring AO-related cyclonic anomaly over the subtropical northwestern Pacific and westerly wind anomalies in the TWP. Thus, these models would produce a La Niña-like pattern in the subsequent winter. Difference in the spring AO-associated atmospheric anomalies over the subtropical North Pacific among the CMIP5 models may be attributed to biases of the models in simulating the spring climatological storm track.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions, which helped to improve the paper. This study is jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant no. 2016YFA0600604), the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants (41605050, 41721004, and 41530425), the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences (QYZDY-SSW-DQC024). The NCEP-NCAR data are obtained from https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.html. The ERSSTv3b data are obtained from https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.noaa.ersst.v3.html. The CMIP5 historical simulation data are obtained from https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip5/. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modeling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (listed in Table 1 of this paper) for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the U.S. Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.

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  1. Center for Monsoon System Research, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yuqiong Zheng, Shangfeng Chen & Wen Chen

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yuqiong Zheng, Shangfeng Chen & Wen Chen

  3. Climate Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Bin Yu

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Zheng, Y., Chen, S., Chen, W. et al. Diverse influences of spring Arctic Oscillation on the following winter El Niño–Southern Oscillation in CMIP5 models. Clim Dyn 56, 275–297 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05483-0

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