Evaluating the relationship between interannual variations in the Antarctic ozone hole and Southern Hemisphere surface climate in chemistry-climate models

Studies have recently reported statistically significant relationships between observed year-to-year spring Antarctic ozone variability and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode and surface temperatures in spring-summer. This study investigates whether current chemistry-climate models (CCMs) can capture these relationships, in particular, the connection between November total column ozone (TCO) and Australian summer surface temperatures, where years with anomalously high TCO over the Antarctic polar cap tend to be followed by warmer summers. The interannual ozone-temperature teleconnection is examined over the historical period in the observations and simulations from the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) and nine other models participating in the Chemistry-Climate Model Initiative (CCMI). There is a systematic difference between the WACCM experiments forced with prescribed observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and those with an interactive ocean. Strong correlations between TCO and Australian temperatures are only obtained for the uncoupled experiment, suggesting that the SSTs could be important for driving both variations in Australian temperatures and the ozone hole, with no causal link between the two. Other CCMI models also tend to capture this relationship with more fidelity when driven by observed SSTs, though additional research and targeted modelling experiments are required to determine causality and further explore the role of model biases and observational uncertainty. The results indicate that CCMs can reproduce the relationship between spring ozone and summer Australian climate reported in observational studies, suggesting that incorporating ozone variability could improve seasonal predictions, however more work is required to understand the difference between the coupled and uncoupled simulations

Evaluating the relationship between interannual variations in the Antarctic ozone hole and Southern Hemisphere surface climate in chemistry-climate models

Studies have recently reported statistically significant relationships between observed year-to-year spring Antarctic ozone variability and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode and surface temperatures in spring-summer. This study investigates whether current chemistry-climate models (CCMs) can capture these relationships, in particular, the connection between November total column ozone (TCO) and Australian summer surface temperatures, where years with anomalously high TCO over the Antarctic polar cap tend to be followed by warmer summers. The interannual ozone-temperature teleconnection is examined over the historical period in the observations and simulations from the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) and nine other models participating in the Chemistry-Climate Model Initiative (CCMI). There is a systematic difference between the WACCM experiments forced with prescribed observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and those with an interactive ocean. Strong correlations between TCO and Australian temperatures are only obtained for the uncoupled experiment, suggesting that the SSTs could be important for driving both variations in Australian temperatures and the ozone hole, with no causal link between the two. Other CCMI models also tend to capture this relationship with more fidelity when driven by observed SSTs, though additional research and targeted modelling experiments are required to determine causality and further explore the role of model biases and observational uncertainty. The results indicate that CCMs can reproduce the relationship between spring ozone and summer Australian climate reported in observational studies, suggesting that incorporating ozone variability could improve seasonal predictions, however more work is required to understand the difference between the coupled and uncoupled simulations

Meehl (2006), Contributions of external forcings to southern annular mode trends

ABSTRACT An observed trend in the Southern Hemisphere annular mode (SAM) during recent decades has involved an intensification of the polar vortex. The source of this trend is a matter of scientific debate with stratospheric ozone losses, greenhouse gas increases, and natural variability all being possible contenders. Because it is difficult to separate the contribution of various external forcings to the observed trend, a state-of-the-art global coupled model is utilized here. Ensembles of twentieth-century simulations forced with the observed time series of greenhouse gases, tropospheric and stratospheric ozone, sulfate aerosols, volcanic aerosols, solar variability, and various combinations of these are used to examine the annular mode trends in comparison to observations, in an attempt to isolate the response of the climate system to each individual forcing. It is found that ozone changes are the biggest contributor to the observed summertime intensification of the southern polar vortex in the second half of the twentieth century, with increases of greenhouse gases also being a necessary factor in the reproduction of the observed trends at the surface. Although stratospheric ozone losses are expected to stabilize and eventually recover to preindustrial levels over the course of the twenty-first century, these results show that increasing greenhouse gases will continue to intensify the polar vortex throughout the twenty-first century, but that radiative forcing will cause widespread temperature increases over the entire Southern Hemisphere

Historical and projected trends in temperature and precipitation extremes in Australia in observations and CMIP5

This study expands previous work on climate extremes in Australia by investigating the simulation of a large number of extremes indices in the CMIP5 multi-model dataset and comparing them to multiple observational datasets over a century of observed data using consistent methods. We calculate 24 indices representing extremes of temperature and precipitation from 1911 to 2010 over Australia and show that there have been significant observed trends in temperature extremes associated with warming while there have been few significant observed trends in precipitation extremes. We compare the observed indices calculated from two mostly independent datasets with 22 CMIP5 models to determine how well global climate models are able to simulate observed climatologies, variability and trends. We find that generally temperature extremes are reasonably well simulated (climatology, variability and trend patterns) although the models tend to overestimate minimum temperature extremes and underestimate maximum temperature extremes. Some models stand out as being outliers and we exclude one model (INMCM4) entirely from the multi-model analysis as it simulates unrealistic minimum temperature extremes over the historical period. There is more spread between models for precipitation than temperature extremes but in most cases the observations sit within the model spread. Exceptions are consecutive wet days (CWD) where nearly all models overestimate the actual number of annual wet days and simple daily intensity (SDII) and one day precipitation maxima (Rx1day) where the models tend to underestimate precipitation intensity. However, some of these differences likely lie in observational uncertainty. Most models including the multi-model mean indicate that precipitation intensity has increased over the last century but the two observational datasets analysed disagree on the sign of change of precipitation intensity, one of them indicating a significant decrease. We use the CMIP5 simulations for two future Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) to project changes in temperature and precipitation extremes across Australia. By the end of the century the number of cold temperature extremes substantially reduces and the number of warm temperature extremes substantially increases; changes scaling relative to the strength of emissions scenario. Changes in temperature extremes are often greatest in the tropics. While the results for precipitation extremes are less marked, simulations for the end of the century compared to present day indicate more periods of dryness while the most intense precipitation extremes increase substantially, with a separation becoming clear between emissions scenarios

Attribution of the Late-Twentieth-Century Rainfall Decline in Southwest Australia

There was a dramatic decrease in rainfall in the southwest of Australia (SWA) in the mid-1960s. A statistical method, based on the idea of analogous synoptic situations, is used to help clarify the cause of the drying. The method is designed to circumvent error in the rainfall simulated directly by a climate model, and to exploit the ability of the model to simulate large-scale fields reasonably well. The method uses relationships between patterns of various atmospheric fields with station records of rainfall to improve the simulation of the local rainfall spatial variability. The original technique was developed in a previous study. It is modified here for application to two four-member ensembles of simulations of the climate from 1870 to 1999 performed with the Parallel Climate Model (PCM). The first ensemble, called natural, is forced with natural variations in both volcanic activity and solar forcing. The second ensemble, called full forcing, also includes three types of human-induced forcing resulting from changes in greenhouse gases, ozone, and aerosols. The full-forcing runs provide a better match to observational changes in sea surface temperature in the vicinity of SWA. The observed rainfall decline is not well captured by rainfall changes simulated directly by the model in either ensemble. There is a hint that the fully forced ensemble is more realistic, but it is nothing more than a hint. The downscaling approach, on the other hand, provides a much more accurate reproduction of the day-to-day variability of rainfall in SWA than the rainfall simulated directly by the model. The downscaled ensemble mean rainfall in full forcing declines over the region with a spatial pattern that is similar to the observed decline. This contrasts with an increase of rainfall in the downscaled rainfall in the natural ensemble. These results give the clearest indication yet that anthropogenic forcing played a role in the drying of SWA. Note, however, that ambiguities remain. For example, although the observed decline fits within the range of downscaled model simulation, the ensemble mean rainfall decline is only about half of the observed estimate, the timing differs from the observations, drying did not occur in the downscaling of one of the four fall-forced ensemble members, and not all potential forcing mechanisms are included in full forcing (e.g., land surface changes). Furthermore, while the observed rainfall decline was a sharp reduction in the 1960s, followed by a near-constant rainfall regime, the full-forcing ensemble suggests a more gradual rainfall decline over 40 yr from 1960