Interannual variability of Mediterranean evaporation and its relation to regional climate

Gridded monthly evaporation data for 1958–2006 from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution data set are used to investigate interannual variability of Mediterranean evaporation during cold and hot seasons and its relation to regional atmospheric dynamics, sea surface temperature and atmospheric elements of the hydrological cycle. The first EOF mode of Mediterranean evaporation, explaining more than 50% of its total variance, is characterized by the monopole pattern both in winter and summer. However, despite structural similarity, the EOF-1 of Mediterranean evaporation is affected by different climate signals in cold and hot seasons. During winter the EOF-1 is associated with the East Atlantic teleconnection pattern. In summer, there is indication of tropical influence on the EOF-1 of Mediterranean evaporation (presumably from Asian monsoon). Both in winter and summer, principal components of EOF-1 demonstrate clear interdecadal signals (with a stronger signature in summer) associated with large sea surface temperature anomalies. The results of a sensitivity analysis suggest that in winter both the meridional wind and the vertical gradient of saturation specific humidity (GSSH) near the sea surface contribute to the interdecadal evaporation signal. In summer, however, it is likely that the signal is more related to GSSH. Our analysis did not reveal significant links between the Mediterranean evaporation and the North Atlantic Oscillation in any season. The EOF-2 of evaporation accounts for 20% (11%) of its total variance in winter (in summer). Both in winter and summer the EOF-2 is characterized by a zonal dipole with opposite variations of evaporation in western and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea. This mode is associated presumably with smaller scale (i.e., local) effects of atmospheric dynamics. Seasonality of the leading modes of the Mediterranean evaporation is also clearly seen in the character of their links to atmospheric elements of the regional hydrological cycle. In particular, significant links to precipitation in some regions have been found in winter, but not in summer.     

The temporal variability of soil wetness and its impact on climate

The temporal variability of soil wetness and its interactions with the atmosphere were studied using a general circulation model of the atmosphere. It was found that time series of soil wetness computed by the model contain substantial amounts of variance at low frequencies. Long time-scale anomalies of soil moisture resemble the red noise response of the soil layer to white noise rainfall forcing. The dependence of the temporal variability of soil moisture on potential evaporation and precipitation is discussed.     

Tropical deforestation and climate variability

A new tropical deforestation experiment has been performed, with the ARPEGE-Climat atmospheric global circulation model associated with the ISBA land surface scheme. Simulations are forced with observed monthly mean sea surface temperatures and thus inter-annual variability of the ocean system is taken into account. The local mean response to deforestation over Amazonia and Africa is relatively weak compared with most published studies and compensation effects are particularly important. However, a large increase in daily maximum temperatures is obtained during the dry season when soil water stress dominates. The analysis of daily variability shows that the distributions of daily minimum and maximum temperatures are noticeably modified with an increase in extreme temperatures. Daily precipitation amounts also indicate a weakening of the convective activity. Conditions for the onset of convection are less frequently gathered, particularly over southern Amazonia and western equatorial Africa. At the same time, the intensity of convective events is reduced, especially over equatorial deforested regions. The inter-annual variability is also enhanced. For instance, El Niño events generally induce a large drying over northern Amazonia, which is well reproduced in the control simulation. In the deforested experiment, a positive feedback effect leads to a strong intensification of this drying and a subsequent increase in surface temperature. The change in variability as a response to deforestation can be more crucial than the change of the mean climate since more intense extremes could be more detrimental for agriculture than an increase in mean temperatures.     

Mediterranean wave climate variability and its links with NAO and Indian Monsoon

This study examines the variability of the monthly average significant wave height (SWH) field in the Mediterranean Sea, in the period 1958–2001. The analysed data are provided by simulations carried out using the WAM model (WAMDI group, 1988) forced by the wind fields of the ERA-40 (ECMWF Re-Analysis). Comparison with buoy observations, satellite data, and simulations forced by higher resolution wind fields shows that, though results underestimate the actual SWH, they provide a reliable representation of its real space and time variability. Principal component analysis (PCA) shows that the annual cycle is characterised by two main empirical orthogonal functions (EOF) patterns. Most inter-monthly variability is associated with the first EOF, whose positive/negative phase is due to the action of Mistral/Etesian wind regimes. The second EOF is related to the action of southerly winds (Libeccio and Sirocco). The annual cycle presents two main seasons, winter and summer characterised, the first, by the prevalence of eastwards and southeastwards propagating waves all over the basin, and the second, by high southwards propagating waves in the Aegean Sea and Levantin Basin. Spring and fall are transitional seasons, characterised by northwards and northeastwards propagating waves, associated to an intense meridional atmospheric circulation, and by attenuation and amplification, respectively, of the action of Mistral. These wave field variability patterns are associated with consistent sea level pressure (SLP) and surface wind field structures. The intensity of the SWH field shows large inter-annual and inter-decadal variability and a statistically significant decreasing trend of mean winter values. The winter average SWH is anti-correlated with the winter NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) index, which shows a correspondingly increasing trend. During summer, a minor component of the wave field inter-annual variability (associated to the second EOF) presents a statistically significant correlation with the Indian Monsoon reflecting its influence on the meridional Mediterranean circulation. However, the SLP patterns associated with the SWH inter-annual variability reveal structures different from NAO and Monsoon circulation. In fact, wave field variability is conditioned by regional storminess in combination with the effect of fetch. The latter is likely to be the most important. Therefore, the inter-annual variability of the mean SWH is associated to SLP patterns, which present their most intense features above or close to Mediterranean region, where they are most effective for wave generation.

---

Intraseasonal and interannual climate variability

Major advances in our understanding of intraseasonal-interannual climate variability during the past three decades are reviewed. Prospects for prediction on these time-scales are briefly discussed.Paper based on talk presented at the session honoring J. Murray Mitchell at the December 1986 AGU meeting in San Francisco, CA.     

Recent climate variability and its impacts on soybean yields in Southern Brazil

Recent climate variability in rainfall, temperatures (maximum and minimum), and the diurnal temperature range is studied with emphasis on its influence over soybean yields in southern Brazil, during 1969 to 2002. The results showed that the soybean (Glycine max L. Merril) yields are more affected by changes in temperature during summer, while changes in rainfall are more important during the beginning of plantation and at its peak of development. Furthermore, soybean yields in Paraná are more sensitive to rainfall variations, while soybean yields in the Rio Grande do Sul are more sensitive to variations in temperature. Effects of interannual climatic variability on soybean yields are evaluated through three agro-meteorological models: additive Stewart, multiplicative Rao, and multiplicative Jensen. The Jensen model is able to reproduce the interannual behavior of soybean yield reasonably well.     

北半球夏季大气活动中心与海平面气压场的气候基本态及变率特征

研究了近１００多年北半球夏季大气活动中心强度与北半球产面气压场的气候基本态及气候变率特征及时间演变。指出,夏季太平洋高压区与印度 压区的变化;第二模态主要表现太平洋高压及大西洋高压的特征。它们都有明显的长期变化。近百年来,印度低 与太平洋高压已明显地加强了,大西洋高压也有所加强。印度低压的低频强度具有大约８０年周期变化特征。而太平洋高压及大西洋高压则表现为明显的正趋势,它们的突变加强发生在本世纪末     

Modes of climate variability as simulated by a coupled general circulation model. Part I: ENSO-like climate variability and its low-frequency modulation

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is investigated in a multicentury integration conducted with the coupled general circulation model (CGCM) ECHAM3/LSG. The quasiperiodic interannual oscillations of the simulated equatorial Pacific climate system are due to subsurface temperature anomaly propagation and a positive atmosphere-ocean feedback. The gravest internal wave modes contribute to the generation of these anomalies. The simulated ENSO has a characteristic period of 5–8 years. Due to the coarse resolution of the ocean model the ENSO amplitude is underestimated by a factor of three as compared to observations. The model ENSO is associated with the typical atmospheric teleconnection patterns. Using wavelet statistics two characteristic interdecadal modulations of the ENSO variance are identified. The origins of a 22 and 35?y ENSO modulation as well as the characteristic ENSO response to greenhouse warming simulated by our model are discussed.     

Ethiopian decadal climate variability

Ethiopian decadal climate variability is characterized by application of singular value decomposition to gridded rainfall data over the period 1901–2007. Two distinct modes are revealed with different annual cycles and opposing responses to regional and global forcing. The northern zone that impacts the Nile River and underlies the tropical easterly jet has a unimodal rainy season that is enhanced by Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation warm phase. This rainfall mode is linked with the Atlantic zonal overturning circulation and exhibits 10–12-year cycles through much of the twentieth century. The southern zone has a bimodal rainy season that is enhanced by Pacific Decadal Oscillation cool phase and the southern meridional overturning circulation. Multiyear wet and dry spells are characterized by sympathetic responses in the near-equatorial trough extending from Central America across the African Sahel to Southeast Asia. The interaction of Walker and Hadley cells over Africa appears to be a key feature that modulates Ethiopian climate at decadal frequency through anomalous north–south displacement of the near-equatorial trough.     

Interannual variability and regional climate simulations

Summary An assessment is made of a regional climate model's skill in simulating the mean climatology and the interannual variability experienced in a specific region. To this end two ensembles comprising three realizations of month-long January and July simulations are undertaken with a limited are a operational NWP model. The modelling suite is driven at its lateral boundaries by analysed meteorological fields and the computational domain covers Europe and the North-western Atlantic with a horizontal resolution of 56 km.Validation is performed against both operational ECMWF analyses and objectively analysed precipitation fields from a network of ~ 1400 SYNOP rain gauge stations. Analysis of the simulated ensemble-mean climatology indicates that the model successfully reproduces both the winter and summer distributions of the primary dynamical and thermodynamical field, and also provides a reasonable representation of the measured precipitation over most of Europe. Typically the domain averaged model-biases are below 0.5 K for temperature and 0.1 g/kg for specific humidity. Analysis of the interannual variability reveals that the model captures the wintertime changes including that of the precipitation distribution, but in contrast the summertime precipitation totals for the individual years is not simulated satisfactorily and only partially reproduces the observed regional interannual variability.The latter shortcomings are related to the following factors. Firstly the model bias in the dynamical fields is somewhat larger for summer than winter, while at the same time summertime interannual variability is associated with weaker effects in the dynamical fields. Secondly the summertime precipitation distribution is more substantially affected by small-scale moist convection and surface hydrological processes. Together these two factors suggest that summertime precipitation over continental extratropical land masses might be intrinsically less predictable than wintertime synoptic scale precipitation.With 17 Figures     

Arctic radiation deficit and climate variability

One of the generally accepted climatic effects of stratospheric aerosol injection is the reduction of the global radiation in high latitudes by an order of 5% during El Chichon type eruptions. To test the effect of a high-latitude radiation deficit on global climate, a GCM experiment was performed with the ECMWF T21 atmosphere general circulation model (AGCM). The results provide physically-consistent evidence that this radiation deficit is a possible external forcing factor for severe climatic anomalies not only in the area directly affected by the reduced radiation, but also in the tropics. The most important factor is the creation of enhanced snow cover in regions of Asia that are distant from the location of the introduced radiation anomaly. The simulated results show certain features that are well known from observations in weak monsoon years, i.e. the weakened easterly jet in the upper troposphere over northern India, prolonged winter monsoon conditions, and prevailing anticyclonic vorticity anomalies over the entire Indian summer monsoon region. Over the western Pacific at the end of boreal winter (May), increased convective activity leads to a negative Walker circulation anomaly with westerly wind anomalies near the surface and easterly anomalies in the upper troposphere. This is known as one of the most important anomalies at the beginning of an El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event.This paper was presented at the International Conference on Modelling of Global Climate Change and Variability, held in Hamburg 11–15 September 1989 under the auspices of the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. Guest Editor for these papers is Dr. L. Dümenil     

Horizontal variability and boundary-layer modeling

Micrometeorologists have traditionally set aside consideration of horizontal variability and have studied boundary-layer structure with horizontal homogeneity. The numerical forecasting of boundary-layer structures, over normally varying terrain and including normal disturbances such as fronts, requires selection of an appropriate horizontal scale.A simple analysis of steady-state balance between horizontal advection and vertical diffusion provides estimates of the vertical scale (or depth) of surface-induced features. The scale height is a function of the horizontal scale of the variations. Models neglecting important terrain scales of length below ~ 1000 km can predict down to levels of ~ 0.5 to 1 km while those that neglect important terrain scales below ~ 100 km can predict down to ~ 0.2 to 0.6 km. Below these levels, any predicted features will be dominated by the vertical diffusion so that they are solutions of a one-dimensional boundary-value problem.The boundary-induced advection effects dominate free atmosphere advection effects in the lowest few hundred meters as well. This means that if mesoscale advections are resolved and terrain influences are strong, the predictions in the layer ~ 0.2 to 0.8 km can provide mesoscale detail without mesoscale initial conditions above the surface, because the surface forcing will dominate the solution.     

Coupled ocean-atmosphere surface variability and its climate impacts in the tropical Atlantic region

 This study examines time evolution and statistical relationships involving the two leading ocean-atmosphere coupled modes of variability in the tropical Atlantic and some climate anomalies over the tropical 120 °W–60 °W region using selected historical files (75-y near global SSTs and precipitation over land), more recent observed data (30-y SST and pseudo wind stress in the tropical Atlantic) and reanalyses from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis System on the period 1968–1997: surface air temperature, sea level pressure, moist static energy content at 850 hPa, precipitable water and precipitation. The first coupled mode detected through singular value decomposition of the SST and pseudo wind-stress data over the tropical Atlantic (30 °N–20 °S) expresses a modulation in the thermal transequatorial gradient of SST anomalies conducted by one month leading wind-stress anomalies mainly in the tropical north Atlantic during northern winter and fall. It features a slight dipole structure in the meridional plane. Its time variability is dominated by a quasi-decadal signal well observed in the last 20–30 ys and, when projected over longer-term SST data, in the 1920s and 1930s but with shorter periods. The second coupled mode is more confined to the south-equatorial tropical Atlantic in the northern summer and explains considerably less wind-stress/SST cross-covariance. Its time series features an interannual variability dominated by shorter frequencies with increased variance in the 1960s and 1970s before 1977. Correlations between these modes and the ENSO-like Nino3 index lead to decreasing amplitude of thermal anomalies in the tropical Atlantic during warm episodes in the Pacific. This could explain the nonstationarity of meridional anomaly gradients on seasonal and interannual time scales. Overall the relationships between the oceanic component of the coupled modes and the climate anomaly patterns denote thermodynamical processes at the ocean/atmosphere interface that create anomaly gradients in the meridional plane in a way which tends to alter the north–south movement of the seasonal cycle. This appears to be consistent with the intrinsic non-dipole character of the tropical Atlantic surface variability at the interannual time step and over the recent period, but produces abnormal amplitude and/or delayed excursions of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). Connections with continental rainfall are approached through three (NCEP/NCAR and observed) rainfall indexes over the Nordeste region in Brazil, and the Guinea and Sahel zones in West Africa. These indices appear to be significantly linked to the SST component of the coupled modes only when the two Atlantic modes+the ENSO-like Nino3 index are taken into account in the regressions. This suggests that thermal forcing of continental rainfall is particularly sensitive to the linear combinations of some basic SST patterns, in particular to those that create meridional thermal gradients. The first mode in the Atlantic is associated with transequatorial pressure, moist static energy and precipitable water anomaly patterns which can explain abnormal location of the ITCZ particularly in northern winter, and hence rainfall variations in Nordeste. The second mode is more associated with in-phase variations of the same variables near the southern edge of the ITCZ, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea during the northern spring and winter. It is primarily linked to the amplitude and annual phase of the ITCZ excursions and thus to rainfall variations in Guinea. Connections with Sahel rainfall are less clear due to the difficulty for the model to correctly capture interannual variability over that region but the second Atlantic mode and the ENSO-like Pacific variability are clearly involved in the Sahel climate interannual fluctuations: anomalous dry (wet) situations tend to occur when warmer (cooler) waters are present in the eastern Pacific and the gulf of Guinea in northern summer which contribute to create a northward (southward) transequatorial anomaly gradient in sea level pressure over West Africa. Received: 14 April 1998 / Accepted: 24 December 1998     

Atmospheric radiative feedbacks associated with transient climate change and climate variability

This study examines in detail the ‘atmospheric’ radiative feedbacks operating in a coupled General Circulation Model (GCM). These feedbacks (defined as the change in top of atmosphere radiation per degree of global surface temperature change) are due to responses in water vapour, lapse rate, clouds and surface albedo. Two types of radiative feedback in particular are considered: those arising from century scale ‘transient’ warming (from a 1% per annum compounded CO₂ increase), and those operating under the model’s own unforced ‘natural’ variability. The time evolution of the transient (or ‘secular’) feedbacks is first examined. It is found that both the global strength and the latitudinal distributions of these feedbacks are established within the first two or three decades of warming, and thereafter change relatively little out to 100 years. They also closely approximate those found under equilibrium warming from a ‘mixed layer’ ocean version of the same model forced by a doubling of CO₂. These secular feedbacks are then compared with those operating under unforced (interannual) variability. For water vapour, the interannual feedback is only around two-thirds the strength of the secular feedback. The pattern reveals widespread regions of negative feedback in the interannual case, in turn resulting from patterns of circulation change and regions of decreasing as well as increasing surface temperature. Considering the vertical structure of the two, it is found that although positive net mid to upper tropospheric contributions dominate both, they are weaker (and occur lower) under interannual variability than under secular change and are more narrowly confined to the tropics. Lapse rate feedback from variability shows weak negative feedback over low latitudes combined with strong positive feedback in mid-to-high latitudes resulting in no net global feedback—in contrast to the dominant negative low to mid-latitude response seen under secular climate change. Surface albedo feedback is, however, slightly stronger under interannual variability—partly due to regions of extremely weak, or even negative, feedback over Antarctic sea ice in the transient experiment. Both long and shortwave global cloud feedbacks are essentially zero on interannual timescales, with the shortwave term also being very weak under climate change, although cloud fraction and optical property components show correlation with global temperature both under interannual variability and transient climate change. The results of this modelling study, although for a single model only, suggest that the analogues provided by interannual variability may provide some useful pointers to some aspects of climate change feedback strength, particularly for water vapour and surface albedo, but that structural differences will need to be heeded in such an analysis.     

Atlantic multidecadal oceanic variability and its influence on the atmosphere in a climate model

The mechanisms controlling the decadal to multidecadal variability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) and its influence on the atmosphere are investigated using a control simulation with the IPSL-CM4 climate model. The multidecadal fluctuations of the MOC are mostly driven by deep convection in the subpolar gyre, which occurs south of Iceland in the model. The latter is primarily influenced by the anomalous advection of salinity due to changes in the East Atlantic Pattern (EAP), which is the second mode of atmospheric variability in the North Atlantic region. The North Atlantic Oscillation is the dominant mode, but it plays a secondary role in the MOC fluctuations. During summer, the MOC variability is shown to have a significant impact on the atmosphere in the North Atlantic–European sector. The MOC influence is due to an interhemispheric sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly with opposite signs in the two hemispheres but largest amplitude in the northern one. The SST pattern driven by the MOC mostly resembles the model Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and bears some similarity with the observed one. It is shown that the AMO reflects both the MOC influence and the local atmospheric forcing. Hence, the MOC influence on climate is best detected using lagged relations between climatic fields. The atmospheric response resembles the EAP, in a phase that might induce a weak positive feedback on the MOC.     

South Australian rainfall variability and climate extremes

Rainfall extremes over South Australia are connected with broad-scale atmospheric rearrangements associated with strong meridional sea surface temperature (SST) gradients in the eastern Indian Ocean. Thirty-seven years of winter radiosonde data is used to calculate a time series of precipitable water (PW) and convective available potential energy (CAPE) in the atmosphere. Principle component analysis on the parameters of CAPE and PW identify key modes of variability that are spatially and seasonally consistent with tropospheric processes over Australia. The correlation of the leading principle component of winter PW to winter rainfall anomalies reveal the spatial structure of the northwest cloudband and fronts that cross the southern half of the continent during winter. Similarly the second and third principle components, respectively, reveal the structures of the less frequent northern and continental cloudbands with remarkable consistency. 850 hPa-level wind analysis shows that during dry seasons, anomalous offshore flow over the northwest of Australia inhibits advection of moisture into the northwest, while enhanced subsidence from stronger anticyclonic circulation over the southern half of the continent reduces CAPE. This coincides with a southward shift of the subtropical ridge resulting in frontal systems passing well to the south of the continent, thus producing less frequent interaction with moist air advected from the tropics. Wet winters are the reverse, where a weaker meridional pressure gradient to the south of the continent allows rain-bearing fronts to reach lower latitudes. The analysis of SSTs in the Indian Ocean indicate that anomalous warm (cool) waters in the southeast Indian Ocean coincide with a southward (northward) shift in the subtropical ridge during dry (wet) seasons.