1. Past long-term summer warming over western Europe in new generation climate models: role of large-scale atmospheric circulation
- Author
-
Julien Boé, Klaus Wyser, Christopher D. Roberts, Dian Putrasahan, Reindert J. Haarsma, Sybren Drijfhout, Katja Lohmann, Laurent Terray, Enrico Scoccimarro, Malcolm J. Roberts, Marie-Pierre Moine, Retish Senan, Sophie Valcke, Jon Seddon, Alessio Bellucci, Sci Univers CERFACS, URA 1875, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre Européen de Recherche et de Formation Avancée en Calcul Scientifique (CERFACS), CERFACS, Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici [Bologna] (CMCC), Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), Laboratoire de Mécanique, Modélisation et Procédés Propres (M2P2), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-École Centrale de Marseille (ECM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), CERFACS [Toulouse], Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie (MPI-M), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI)
- Subjects
trends ,model evaluation ,Climate Research ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Scale (ratio) ,Atmospheric circulation ,atmospheric circulation ,Climate change ,010502 geochemistry & geophysics ,01 natural sciences ,Klimatforskning ,ComputingMilieux_MISCELLANEOUS ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,General Environmental Science ,[SDU.OCEAN]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Ocean, Atmosphere ,summer warming ,Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment ,Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health ,Term (time) ,Europe ,climate change ,13. Climate action ,[SDU.STU.CL]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Climatology ,Western europe ,Climatology ,Environmental science ,Climate model - Abstract
Past studies have concluded that climate models of previous generations tended to underestimate the large warming trend that has been observed in summer over western Europe in the last few decades. The causes of this systematic error are still not clear. Here, we investigate this issue with a new generation of climate models and systematically explore the role of large-scale circulation in that context. As an ensemble, climate models in this study warm less over western Europe and warm more over eastern Europe than observed on the 1951–2014 period, but it is difficult to conclude this is directly due to systematic errors given the large potential impact of internal variability. These differences in temperature trends are explained to an important extent by an anti-correlation of sea level pressure trends over the North Atlantic / Europe domain between models and observations. The observed trend tends to warm (cool) western (eastern) Europe but the simulated trends generally have the opposite effect, both in new generation and past generation climate models. The differences between observed and simulated sea level pressure trends are likely the result of systematic model errors, which might also impact future climate projections. Neither a higher resolution nor the realistic representation of the evolution of sea surface temperature and sea ice leads to a better simulation of sea level pressure trends.
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF