Spatial and temporal agreement in climate model simulations of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation
Abstract
Accelerated warming and hiatus periods in the long-term rise of Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) have, in recent decades, been associated with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Critically, decadal climate prediction relies on the skill of state-of-the-art climate models to reliably represent these low-frequency climate variations. We undertake a systematic evaluation of the simulation of the IPO in the suite of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) models. We track the IPO in pre-industrial (control) and all-forcings (historical) experiments using the IPO tripole index (TPI). The TPI is explicitly aligned with the observed spatial pattern of the IPO, and circumvents assumptions about the nature of global warming. We find that many models underestimate the ratio of decadal-to-total variance in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). However, the basin-wide spatial pattern of positive and negative phases of the IPO are simulated reasonably well, with spatial pattern correlation coefficients between observations and models spanning the range 0.4–0.8. Deficiencies are mainly in the extratropical Pacific. Models that better capture the spatial pattern of the IPO also tend to more realistically simulate the ratio of decadal to total variance. Of the 13% of model centuries that have a fractional bias in the decadal-to-total TPI variance ofmore »
- Authors:
-
- Univ. of Melbourne, VIC (Australia). School of Earth Sciences; Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Melbourne, VIC (Australia)
- National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
- Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, VIC (Australia)
- Met Office, Exeter (United Kingdom). Hadley Centre; Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich (United Kingdom). School of Environmental Sciences; Univ. of Gothenburg (Sweden). Dept. of Earth Sciences; Univ. of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD (Australia). International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Agriculture and Food, Hobart, TAS (Australia)
- Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Melbourne, VIC (Australia); Monash Univ., Melbourne, VIC (Australia). School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment
- Univ. of Bern (Switzerland). Inst. of Geography. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO (United States); Univ. of Melbourne, VIC (Australia); Univ. of Bern (Switzerland); Met Office, Exeter (United Kingdom)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); National Science Foundation (NSF); Australian Research Council (ARC) (Australia); Dept. for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) (United Kingdom); Dept. for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) (United Kingdom); Swiss National Science Foundation (NSF) (Switzerland)
- Contributing Org.:
- Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Melbourne, VIC (Australia); Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, VIC (Australia); Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich (United Kingdom); Univ. of Gothenburg (Sweden); Univ. of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD (Australia); Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Agriculture and Food, Hobart, TAS (Australia); Monash Univ., Melbourne, VIC (Australia)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1361666
- Grant/Contract Number:
- FC2-97ER62402; LP150100062; CE110001028; GA01101; PZ00P2_154802
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research Letters
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 12; Journal Issue: 4; Journal ID: ISSN 1748-9326
- Publisher:
- IOP Publishing
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation; Pacific Decadal Oscillation; Pacific Decadal Variability; IPO; PDO; CMIP5; model evaluation
Citation Formats
Henley, Benjamin J., Meehl, Gerald, Power, Scott B., Folland, Chris K., King, Andrew D., Brown, Jaclyn N., Karoly, David J., Delage, Francois, Gallant, Ailie J. E., Freund, Mandy, and Neukom, Raphael. Spatial and temporal agreement in climate model simulations of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. United States: N. p., 2017.
Web. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa5cc8.
Henley, Benjamin J., Meehl, Gerald, Power, Scott B., Folland, Chris K., King, Andrew D., Brown, Jaclyn N., Karoly, David J., Delage, Francois, Gallant, Ailie J. E., Freund, Mandy, & Neukom, Raphael. Spatial and temporal agreement in climate model simulations of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. United States. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa5cc8
Henley, Benjamin J., Meehl, Gerald, Power, Scott B., Folland, Chris K., King, Andrew D., Brown, Jaclyn N., Karoly, David J., Delage, Francois, Gallant, Ailie J. E., Freund, Mandy, and Neukom, Raphael. Tue .
"Spatial and temporal agreement in climate model simulations of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation". United States. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa5cc8. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1361666.
@article{osti_1361666,
title = {Spatial and temporal agreement in climate model simulations of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation},
author = {Henley, Benjamin J. and Meehl, Gerald and Power, Scott B. and Folland, Chris K. and King, Andrew D. and Brown, Jaclyn N. and Karoly, David J. and Delage, Francois and Gallant, Ailie J. E. and Freund, Mandy and Neukom, Raphael},
abstractNote = {Accelerated warming and hiatus periods in the long-term rise of Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) have, in recent decades, been associated with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Critically, decadal climate prediction relies on the skill of state-of-the-art climate models to reliably represent these low-frequency climate variations. We undertake a systematic evaluation of the simulation of the IPO in the suite of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) models. We track the IPO in pre-industrial (control) and all-forcings (historical) experiments using the IPO tripole index (TPI). The TPI is explicitly aligned with the observed spatial pattern of the IPO, and circumvents assumptions about the nature of global warming. We find that many models underestimate the ratio of decadal-to-total variance in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). However, the basin-wide spatial pattern of positive and negative phases of the IPO are simulated reasonably well, with spatial pattern correlation coefficients between observations and models spanning the range 0.4–0.8. Deficiencies are mainly in the extratropical Pacific. Models that better capture the spatial pattern of the IPO also tend to more realistically simulate the ratio of decadal to total variance. Of the 13% of model centuries that have a fractional bias in the decadal-to-total TPI variance of 0.2 or less, 84% also have a spatial pattern correlation coefficient with the observed pattern exceeding 0.5. This result is highly consistent across both IPO positive and negative phases. This is evidence that the IPO is related to one or more inherent dynamical mechanisms of the climate system.},
doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/aa5cc8},
journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
number = 4,
volume = 12,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Jan 31 00:00:00 EST 2017},
month = {Tue Jan 31 00:00:00 EST 2017}
}
Web of Science
Works referenced in this record:
Interdecadal modulation of Australian rainfall
journal, February 2002
- J., Arblaster; G., Meehl; A., Moore
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 18, Issue 6
Zonal structure and variability of the Western Pacific dynamic warm pool edge in CMIP5
journal, September 2013
- Brown, Jaclyn N.; Langlais, Clothilde; Maes, Christophe
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 42, Issue 11-12
ENSO-Like Variability: 1900–2013
journal, December 2015
- Chen, Xianyao; Wallace, John M.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 28, Issue 24
Tree-ring estimates of Pacific decadal climate variability
journal, December 2001
- D'Arrigo, R.; Villalba, R.; Wiles, G.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 18, Issue 3-4
On the Asian expression of the PDO
journal, January 2006
- D'Arrigo, Rosanne; Wilson, Rob
- International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 26, Issue 12
Decadal modulation of global surface temperature by internal climate variability
journal, April 2015
- Dai, Aiguo; Fyfe, John C.; Xie, Shang-Ping
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 5, Issue 6
Changes of Pacific decadal variability in the twentieth century driven by internal variability, greenhouse gases, and aerosols
journal, December 2014
- Dong, Lu; Zhou, Tianjun; Chen, Xiaolong
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 41, Issue 23
The impact of global warming on the pacific decadal oscillation and the possible mechanism
journal, December 2013
- Fang, Changfang; Wu, Lixin; Zhang, Xiang
- Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 31, Issue 1
Pacific interdecadal variability driven by tropical–extratropical interactions
journal, August 2013
- Farneti, Riccardo; Molteni, Franco; Kucharski, Fred
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 42, Issue 11-12
North Pacific decadal variability in the CMIP5 last millennium simulations
journal, February 2016
- Fleming, Laura E.; Anchukaitis, Kevin J.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 47, Issue 12
Relative influences of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation and ENSO on the South Pacific Convergence Zone
journal, January 2002
- Folland, C. K.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 29, Issue 13
North Pacific Decadal Variability and Climate Change in the IPCC AR4 Models
journal, June 2011
- Furtado, Jason C.; Di Lorenzo, Emanuele; Schneider, Niklas
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 24, Issue 12
Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown
journal, February 2016
- Fyfe, John C.; Meehl, Gerald A.; England, Matthew H.
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 6, Issue 3
Mora et al. reply
journal, July 2014
- Mora, Camilo; Frazier, Abby G.; Longman, Ryan J.
- Nature, Vol. 511, Issue 7507
A Tripole Index for the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation
journal, March 2015
- Henley, Benjamin J.; Gergis, Joelle; Karoly, David J.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 45, Issue 11-12
Climate-informed stochastic hydrological modeling: Incorporating decadal-scale variability using paleo data: CLIMATE-INFORMED STOCHASTIC HYDROLOGICAL MODELING
journal, November 2011
- Henley, Benjamin J.; Thyer, Mark A.; Kuczera, George
- Water Resources Research, Vol. 47, Issue 11
Bayesian PCA for reconstruction of historical sea surface temperatures
conference, June 2009
- Ilin, Alexander; Kaplan, Alexey
- 2009 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2009 - Atlanta)
Bayesian modelling and ensemble reconstruction of mid-scale spatial variability in North Atlantic sea-surface temperatures for 1850-2008
journal, August 2011
- Karspeck, Alicia R.; Kaplan, Alexey; Sain, Stephan R.
- Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 138, Issue 662
Multi-decadal variability of flood risk: MULTI-DECADAL VARIABILITY OF FLOOD RISK
journal, January 2003
- Kiem, Anthony S.; Franks, Stewart W.; Kuczera, George
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 30, Issue 2
Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling
journal, August 2013
- Kosaka, Yu; Xie, Shang-Ping
- Nature, Vol. 501, Issue 7467
GCM projections for the Pacific Decadal Oscillation under greenhouse forcing for the early 21st century
journal, May 2011
- Lapp, Suzan L.; St. Jacques, Jeannine-Marie; Barrow, Elaine M.
- International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 32, Issue 9
Drivers of decadal hiatus periods in the 20th and 21st centuries
journal, August 2014
- Maher, Nicola; Gupta, Alexander Sen; England, Matthew H.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 41, Issue 16
Recent Walker circulation strengthening and Pacific cooling amplified by Atlantic warming
journal, August 2014
- McGregor, Shayne; Timmermann, Axel; Stuecker, Malte F.
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 4, Issue 10
Relating the strength of the tropospheric biennial oscillation (TBO) to the phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO)
journal, October 2012
- Meehl, Gerald A.; Arblaster, Julie M.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 39, Issue 20
Model-based evidence of deep-ocean heat uptake during surface-temperature hiatus periods
journal, September 2011
- Meehl, Gerald A.; Arblaster, Julie M.; Fasullo, John T.
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 1, Issue 7
The Mid-1970s Climate Shift in the Pacific and the Relative Roles of Forced versus Inherent Decadal Variability
journal, February 2009
- Meehl, Gerald A.; Hu, Aixue; Santer, Benjamin D.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 22, Issue 3
Initialized decadal prediction for transition to positive phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation
journal, June 2016
- Meehl, Gerald A.; Hu, Aixue; Teng, Haiyan
- Nature Communications, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Megadroughts in the Indian Monsoon Region and Southwest North America and a Mechanism for Associated Multidecadal Pacific Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies
journal, May 2006
- Meehl, Gerald A.; Hu, Aixue
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 19, Issue 9
CMIP5 multi-model hindcasts for the mid-1970s shift and early 2000s hiatus and predictions for 2016-2035: Meehl and Teng: Initialized hindcasts and predictions
journal, March 2014
- Meehl, Gerald A.; Teng, Haiyan
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 41, Issue 5
Climate model simulations of the observed early-2000s hiatus of global warming
journal, September 2014
- Meehl, Gerald A.; Teng, Haiyan; Arblaster, Julie M.
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 4, Issue 10
An Evaluation of Reproducibility of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in the CMIP3 Simulations
journal, January 2009
- Oshima, Kazuhiro; Tanimoto, Youichi
- Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan, Vol. 87, Issue 4
Natural climate variability and teleconnections to precipitation over the Pacific-North American region in CMIP3 and CMIP5 models: CLIMATE VARIABILITY IN CMIP5 MODELS
journal, May 2013
- Polade, Suraj D.; Gershunov, Alexander; Cayan, Daniel R.
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 40, Issue 10
Inter-decadal modulation of the impact of ENSO on Australia
journal, May 1999
- Power, S.; Casey, T.; Folland, C.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 15, Issue 5
Unabated planetary warming and its ocean structure since 2006
journal, February 2015
- Roemmich, Dean; Church, John; Gilson, John
- Nature Climate Change, Vol. 5, Issue 3
The Forcing of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
journal, November 2005
- Schneider, Niklas; Cornuelle, Bruce D.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 18, Issue 21
Assessing General Circulation Model Simulations of Atmospheric Teleconnection Patterns
journal, August 2009
- Stoner, Anne Marie K.; Hayhoe, Katharine; Wuebbles, Donald J.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 22, Issue 16
How sensitive are the Pacific–tropical North Atlantic teleconnections to the position and intensity of El Niño-related warming?
journal, June 2015
- Taschetto, A. S.; Rodrigues, R. R.; Meehl, G. A.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 46, Issue 5-6
Summarizing multiple aspects of model performance in a single diagram
journal, April 2001
- Taylor, Karl E.
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 106, Issue D7
Early twentieth-century warming linked to tropical Pacific wind strength
journal, December 2014
- Thompson, Diane M.; Cole, Julia E.; Shen, Glen T.
- Nature Geoscience, Vol. 8, Issue 2
Tropical Pacific and Northern Hemisphere influences on the coherence of Pacific Decadal Oscillation reconstructions: CLIMATE INFLUENCES ON PDO INTER-RECONSTRUCTION COHERENCE
journal, March 2014
- Wise, Erika K.
- International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 35, Issue 1
Works referencing / citing this record:
Southern African summer-rainfall variability, and its teleconnections, on interannual to interdecadal timescales in CMIP5 models
journal, March 2019
- Dieppois, Bastien; Pohl, Benjamin; Crétat, Julien
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 53, Issue 5-6
What Caused the Global Surface Warming Hiatus of 1998–2013?
journal, March 2017
- Xie, Shang-Ping; Kosaka, Yu
- Current Climate Change Reports, Vol. 3, Issue 2
The Signature of Oceanic Processes in Decadal Extratropical SST Anomalies
journal, August 2018
- O'Reilly, Christopher H.; Zanna, Laure
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 45, Issue 15
Uncertainty in near-term global surface warming linked to tropical Pacific climate variability
journal, April 2019
- Bordbar, Mohammad Hadi; England, Matthew H.; Sen Gupta, Alex
- Nature Communications, Vol. 10, Issue 1
Possible causes of data model discrepancy in the temperature history of the last Millennium
journal, May 2018
- Neukom, Raphael; Schurer, Andrew P.; Steiger, Nathan. J.
- Scientific Reports, Vol. 8, Issue 1
Unstable relationship between the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and eastern China summer precipitation: Insights from the Medieval Climate Anomaly and Little Ice Age
journal, February 2020
- Zhou, Xuecheng; Jiang, Dabang; Lang, Xianmei
- The Holocene, Vol. 30, Issue 6
Multi-century cool- and warm-season rainfall reconstructions for Australia's major climatic regions
journal, January 2017
- Freund, Mandy; Henley, Benjamin J.; Karoly, David J.
- Climate of the Past, Vol. 13, Issue 12
Using paleoclimate reconstructions to analyse hydrological epochs associated with Pacific decadal variability
journal, January 2018
- Zhang, Lanying; Kuczera, George; Kiem, Anthony S.
- Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, Vol. 22, Issue 12
Using paleoclimate reconstructions to analyse hydrological epochs associated with Pacific Decadal Variability
journal, April 2018
- Zhang, Lanying; Kucera, George
- Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions
Possible causes of data model discrepancy in the temperature history of the last Millennium
text, January 2018
- Neukom, Raphael; Schurer, Andrew P.; Steiger, Nathan. J.
- Nature Publishing Group
Consistent multidecadal variability in global temperature reconstructions and simulations over the Common Era
text, January 2019
- Neukom, Raphael; Barboza, Luis A.; Erb, Michael P.
- Springer Nature
Moving beyond the catchment scale: Value and opportunities in large‐scale hydrology to understand our changing world
journal, March 2020
- Kingston, Daniel G.; Massei, Nicolas; Dieppois, Bastien
- Hydrological Processes, Vol. 34, Issue 10
Possible causes of data model discrepancy in the temperature history of the last Millennium
journal, May 2018
- Neukom, Raphael; Schurer, Andrew P.; Steiger, Nathan. J.
- Scientific Reports, Vol. 8, Issue 1