A Statistical–Dynamical Estimate of Winter ENSO Teleconnections in a Future Climate

Abstract

Changes in the atmospheric response to SST variability in the decade 2065?75 are estimated from time-slice-like experiments using the NCAR Community Atmosphere Model, version 3 (CAM3) AGCM forced by specified SST and external forcing. The current climate is simulated using observed monthly SST and external forcing for 1951?2000. The change in mean SST for the future is represented by the difference between the 2065?75 and 1965?75 decadal mean SST climatologies from coupled model twentieth-century/future climate simulations of the response to external forcing. The change in external forcing is similarly specified as the change of the external forcing concurrent with the SST change. These seasonally varying changes in SST and external forcing are added to the 50-year sequence of 1951?2000 observed SST and external forcings to produce the specified future climate forcings for the AGCM. Changes in the December through February mean ENSO teleconnections are evaluated from the difference between ensemble means from future and current climate time slice simulations. The ENSO teleconnections are strengthened and displaced westward in the time slice simulations, which is not in agreement with CGCM projections. These changes are associated with increased precipitation/atmospheric heating anomalies due to the warmer tropical SST. The quasigeostrophic stationary wave activity flux indicates that the dominant cause of the changes is a southward shift in a midlatitude central Pacific wave activity source rather than changes in the basic-state stationary wave dispersion properties.