El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant pattern of interannual climate variability, and has strong influence on the atmospheric circulation around the globe. North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is another prominent mode of interannual variability in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics, and exerts a strong influence on the climate of the North Atlantic basin and the surrounding land areas. The main purpose of this study is to describe and assess of the interactions between these two prominent patterns of interannual climate variability.
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GFDL Research Highlights
Stratosphere-to-troposphere transport of ozone is a common occurrence at mid- and high latitudes, but its influence on tropospheric ozone levels remains a long-standing question, despite decades of research. GFDL scientists and colleagues analyzed balloon soundings, lidar, surface and satellite measurements using GFDL’s new global high-resolution chemistry-climate model, to look at the extent to which naturally occurring stratospheric ozone intrusions reach the surface and affect air quality.
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January 14th, 2013 - Have Aerosols Caused the Observed Atlantic Multi-decadal Variability?
Identifying the main drivers of the twentieth-century multi-decadal variability in the Atlantic Ocean is crucial for predicting how the Atlantic will evolve in the coming decades and the resulting broad impacts on weather and precipitation patterns around the globe. A paper recently published in Nature from the Met Office Hadley Centre suggested that aerosols are a prime driver of twentieth-century North Atlantic climate variability, based on simulations using the HadGEM2-ES (UK Met Office Hadley Centre Earth System Model).
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This collaboration, led by NOAA and EPA scientists and entraining expertise from the University of Connecticut, evaluated the potential effects of climate change on cusk (Brosme brosme) in the Northwest Atlantic. Numbers of this demersal (bottom-dwelling) fish (Fig. 1) on the Northeast Atlantic continental shelf have declined dramatically over the past several decades. This is believed to be primarily a result of fishing activities. However, changes in the distribution and abundance of a number of marine fish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic have been linked to climate variability and change, suggesting that both fishing and climate may affect the future status of cusk. Read More…
November 28th, 2012 - Connecting changing ocean circulation with changing climate
Our capability to observe ocean changes has improved dramatically over the past two decades, motivating interest in how these observations can be used to constrain climate change simulations. Projections of future surface climate change and ocean circulation change are both very uncertain. This research shows that circulation changes are important to the surface climate change and we describe a mechanism for the connection. Read More…
August 24th, 2012 - Mixing of dust and NH3 observed globally over anthropogenic dust sources
Dust is one of the most abundant aerosols in the atmosphere, and by scattering and absorbing solar radiation, it affects climate. Anthropogenic dust is largely ignored in most current climate studies. We show how pervasive it is throughout the world, and that it is mostly associated with croplands.
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Dust is one of the most abundant aerosols in the atmosphere, and by scattering and absorbing solar radiation, it affects climate. In particular, anthropogenic dust is a significant source of radiative forcing on the climate system. Increasing numerical resolution of climate models provides an opportunity to create a realistic, high-resolution dust-source inventory. Read More…
August 10th, 2012 - Global calcite cycling constrained by sediment preservation controls
August 3rd, 2012 - Northern high latitude heat budget decomposition and transient warming
The future response of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) to increased carbon dioxide is known to be uncertain, with models showing 21st century weakening of 0 to 50%, according to the IPCC 4th report.
The authors examined the high northern latitude heat budgets of closely related climate models having large and small responses of AMOC to increased carbon dioxide. This paper shows that AMOC weakening is associated with the response of other important climate variables, so its uncertainty affects the projections for those variables as well. Read More…
Clouds and water vapor are among the difficult features of the atmosphere for global climate models to simulate because they are affected by physical processes that operate over very small areas compared to the weather patterns that the models explicitly calculate. The authors used satellite data to assess the representation of clouds and water vapor simulated by several climate models that will participate in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). Read More…