Predictability of North Atlantic Multidecadal Climate Variability
Abstract
Atmospheric weather systems become unpredictable beyond a few weeks, but climate variations can be predictable over much longer periods because of the coupling of the ocean and atmosphere. With the use of a global coupled ocean-atmosphere model, it is shown that the North Atlantic may have climatic predictability on the order of a decade or longer. These results suggest that variations of the dominant multidecadal sea surface temperature patterns in the North Atlantic, which have been associated with changes in climate over Eurasia, can be predicted if an adequate and sustainable system for monitoring the Atlantic Ocean exists.
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We thank J. Anderson, J. Mahlman, S. Manabe, and E. Tziperman for useful suggestions and R. J. Stouffer and T. Delworth for their assistance in carrying out the ensemble calculations and sharing the results of the GFDL climate model's control experiment. Funding for S.M.G. was provided by a fellowship from the NOAA Postdoctoral Program in Climate and Global Change and NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Support for S.M.G. and K.B. was also provided by Atlantic Climate Change Program funding from NOAA's Office of Global Change.
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Published In
Science
Volume 275 | Issue 5297
10 January 1997
10 January 1997
Copyright
© 1997 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 23 September 1996
Accepted: 19 November 1996
Published in print: 10 January 1997
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