Decadal prediction of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre in the HiGEM high-resolution climate model

Robson, Jon, Polo, Irene, Hodson, Dan L. R., Stevens, David P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7283-4405 and Shaffrey, Len C. (2018) Decadal prediction of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre in the HiGEM high-resolution climate model. Climate Dynamics, 50 (3-4). 921–937. ISSN 0930-7575

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Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of initialised decadal hindcasts of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre (SPG) using the HiGEM model, which has a nominal grid-spacing of 90 km in the atmosphere, and 1/3 ∘∘ in the ocean. HiGEM decadal predictions (HiGEM-DP) exhibit significant skill at capturing 0–500 m ocean heat content in the SPG, and outperform historically forced transient integrations and persistence for up to a decade ahead. An analysis of case-studies of North Atlantic decadal change, including the 1960s cooling, the mid-1990s warming, and the post-2005 cooling, show that changes in ocean circulation and heat transport dominate the predictions of the SPG. However, different processes are found to dominate heat content changes in different regions of the SPG. Specifically, ocean advection dominates in the east, but surface fluxes dominate in the west. Furthermore, compared to previous studies, we find a smaller role for ocean heat transport changes due to ocean circulation anomalies at the latitudes of the SPG, and, for the 1960s cooling, a greater role for surface fluxes. Finally, HiGEM-DP predicts the observed positive state of the North Atlantic Oscillation in the early 1990s. These results support an important role for the ocean in driving past changes in the North Atlantic region, and suggest that these changes were predictable.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	north atlantic,decadal prediction,subpolar gyre,climate variability,high-resolution climate modelling,sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Mathematics (former - to 2024)
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Fluid and Solid Mechanics (former - to 2024) Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Fluids & Structures Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Numerical Simulation, Statistics & Data Science
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	31 Mar 2017 00:41
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2024 12:39
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/63148
DOI:	10.1007/s00382-017-3649-2

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