Inter‐Model Spread of North Tropical Atlantic Trans‐Basin Effect Substantially Biases Tropical Pacific Sea Surface Temperature Multiyear Prediction

Sea surface temperature (SST) variability in the tropical Pacific (TP) has world‐wide climate and economic influences; hence, improving its prediction is of great interest. Recent modeling studies suggested that north tropical Atlantic variability can influence TP SST variability and prediction. How...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical research letters Vol. 49; no. 15
Main Authors: Yang, Jun‐Chao, Lv, Zhen, Richter, Ingo, Zhang, Yu, Lin, Xiaopei
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Washington John Wiley & Sons, Inc 16.08.2022
Wiley
Subjects:
Climate
Climate models
Climate prediction
Economic models
Economics
Experiments
model bias
Modelling
multiyear prediction
Precipitation
Sea surface
Sea surface temperature
Skills
Surface temperature
trans‐basin variability
tropical Pacific
Variability
ISSN:0094-8276, 1944-8007
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Sea surface temperature (SST) variability in the tropical Pacific (TP) has world‐wide climate and economic influences; hence, improving its prediction is of great interest. Recent modeling studies suggested that north tropical Atlantic variability can influence TP SST variability and prediction. However, models are subject to biases in both the tropical Atlantic and Pacific, and it remains an open question whether these biases affect the trans‐basin linkages and the prediction of TP SST. To investigate this issue, we apply linear inverse modeling to observations and climate models. We find that removing north tropical Atlantic forcing indeed strongly lowers TP SST multiyear prediction skills in observations and models. Models show a large spread of the Atlantic trans‐basin effect, which leads to markedly different TP SST multiyear prediction skills. Our study highlights the necessity to narrow the inter‐model spread for more reliable TP SST multiyear prediction. Plain Language Summary Tropical Pacific (TP) sea surface temperature (SST) variability is important for climate but hard to predict. Many modeling studies argued that the variability and prediction can be influenced by north tropical Atlantic trans‐basin effect, while the reliability of this argument is influenced by strong model biases. To reveal the influence of model biases in simulating the Atlantic trans‐basin modulation on TP SST prediction, we apply a commonly used tool for prediction called linear inverse modeling. We find that prediction skills of TP SST will strongly decrease without the north tropical Atlantic forcing in both observations and models. However, striking inter‐model spread exists in the strength of the Atlantic trans‐basin effect, resulting in strong inter‐model spread in TP SST multiyear prediction skills. Therefore, more efforts are needed to reduce the inter‐model spread of the Atlantic trans‐basin effect in the future. Key Points Observational evidence supports that north tropical Atlantic forcing substantially improve tropical Pacific (TP) sea surface temperature (SST) multiyear prediction Climate models show strong inter‐model spread in simulating north tropical Atlantic trans‐basin effect The spread of north tropical Atlantic forcing in climate models strongly affects TP SST multiyear prediction skills
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:0094-8276
1944-8007
DOI:10.1029/2022GL098620