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ENSO teleconnections in an ensemble of CORDEX-CORE regional simulations

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Abstract

Recent high-spatial-resolution regional simulations from the global program, coordinated regional climate downscaling experiment-coordinated output for regional evaluations (CORDEX-CORE), are examined to evaluate the capability of regional climate models (RCMs) to represent the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) precipitation and surface air temperature teleconnections over five regions of the world. We find that the ensemble and individual RCM simulations generally preserve the broad regional scale ENSO signal from the general circulation models (GCMs) over different regions around of the world, reproducing the majority of the observed regional responses to ENSO forcing. Furthermore, in some cases, the RCM ensemble and individual models can improve the spatial pattern of teleconnections and the amplitudes of these patterns compared to the driving global models. Among such cases are the precipitation teleconnections over southern Africa, North America and the Arabian–Asian region. Our study presents the first analysis of ENSO teleconnections in GCM-driven RCMs over multiple regions, and it clearly shows the potential value of using such models non only in a climate change research context, but also in seasonal to annual prediction.

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Acknowledgements

We greatly appreciate the comments and suggestions of the editor and two anonymous reviewers, which helped improve this manuscript. The RegCM4 simulations for the ICTP institute have been completed thanks to the support of the CINECA supercomputing center, Bologna, Italy and the ISCRA projects HP10BDU7TR and HP10BQCFJ2. The authors would like to thank Graziano Giuliani and Ivan Girotto for their constant support in the preparation of the simulations used in this paper. The authors would also like to thank the CMIP5, as well as the ESGF for providing access to their database where most of the data is available. The study was also supported by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and the National Climate-Computing Research Center at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS), Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Hamburg, Germany; all of whom provided access to their simulation data. The observations were provided by the Met Office (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/), Hylke Beck, the developer of the MSWEP data (http://www.gloh2o.org/) and the Climate Data Store (CDS) of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF-ERA5; https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels-monthly-means?tab=form)

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  1. Earth System Physics, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy

    José Abraham Torres-Alavez, Filippo Giorgi, Fred Kucharski & Erika Coppola

  2. Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering and Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Lorena Castro-García

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Torres-Alavez, J.A., Giorgi, F., Kucharski, F. et al. ENSO teleconnections in an ensemble of CORDEX-CORE regional simulations. Clim Dyn 57, 1445–1461 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05594-8

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