Search

The Last Millennial Reanalysis (LMR) employs a data assimilation approach to reconstruct climate fields from annually-resolved proxy data over years 0-2000CE. We use the LMR to examine Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) over the last two millennia, and find several robust thermodynamic features associated with a positive Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index that reveal a dynamically-consistent pattern of variability: the Atlantic and most continents warm; sea ice thins over the Arctic and retreats over the Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian Seas; and equatorial precipitation shifts northward. The latter is consistent with anomalous southward energy transport mediated by the atmosphere. Net downward shortwave radiation increases at both the top-of-atmosphere and surface, indicating a decrease in planetary albedo, likely due to a decrease in low clouds. Heat is absorbed by the climate system and the oceans warm. Wavelet analysis of the AMV time series shows a reddening of the frequency spectrum at the 50-to-100-year time scale, but no evidence of a distinct multidecadal or centennial spectral peak. This latter result is insensitive to both choice of prior model and calibration dataset used in the data assimilation algorithm, suggesting that the lack of a distinct multidecadal spectral peak is a robust result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the skill of a new approach to climate field reconstructions (CFRs) using an online paleoclimate data assimilation (PDA) method. Several recent studies have foregone climate model forecasts during assimilation due to the computational expense of running coupled global climate models (CGCMs), and the relatively low skill of these forecasts on longer timescales. Here we greatly diminish the computational cost by employing an empirical forecast model (linear inverse model; LIM), which has been shown to have comparable skill to CGCMs. We reconstruct annual-average 2 m air temperature over the instrumental period (1850-2000) using proxy records from the Pages 2k Consortium phase 1 database; proxy system models for estimating proxy observations are calibrated on GISTEMP surface temperature analyses. We compare results for LIMs calibrated on observational (Berkeley Earth), reanalysis (20th Century Reanalysis), and CMIP5 climate model (CCSM4 and MPI) data relative to a control offline reconstruction method. Generally, we find that the usage of LIM forecasts for online PDA increases reconstruction agreement with the instrumental record for both spatial fields and global mean temperature (GMT). Specifically, the coefficient of efficiency (CE) skill metric for detrended GMT increases by an average of 57 % over the offline benchmark. LIM experiments display a common pattern of skill improvement in the spatial fields over northern hemisphere land areas and in the high-latitude North Atlantic - Barents Sea corridor. Experiments for non-CGCM-calibrated LIMs reveal region-specific reductions in spatial skill compared to the offline control, likely due to aspects of the LIM calibration process. Overall, the CGCM-calibrated LIMs have the best performance when considering both spatial fields and GMT. A comparison with the persistence forecast experiment suggests that improvements are associated with the dynamical evolution, and not simply persistence of temperature anomalies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficacy of a novel ensemble data assimilation (DA) technique is examined in the climate field reconstruction (CFR) of surface temperature. A minimalistic, computationally inexpensive DA technique is employed that requires only a static ensemble of climatologically plausible states. Pseudoproxy experiments are performed with both general circulation model (GCM) and Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR) data by reconstructing surface temperature fields from a sparse network of noisy pseudoproxies. The DA approach is compared to a conventional CFR approach based on principal component analysis (PCA) for experiments on global domains. DA outperforms PCA in reconstructing global-mean temperature in all experiments and is more consistent across experiments, with a range of time series correlations of 0.69-0.94 compared to 0.19-0.87 for the PCA method. DA improvements are even more evident in spatial reconstruction skill, especially in sparsely sampled pseudoproxy regions and for 20CR experiments. It is hypothesized that DA improves spatial reconstructions because it relies on coherent, spatially local temperature patterns, which remain robust even when glacial states are used to reconstruct nonglacial states and vice versa. These local relationships, as utilized by DA, appear to be more robust than the orthogonal patterns of variability utilized by PCA. Comparing results for GCM and 20CR data indicates that pseudoproxy experiments that rely solely on GCM data may give a false impression of reconstruction skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of transient mountain waves on a large-scale flow is examined through idealized numerical simulations of the passage of a time-evolving synoptic-scale jet over an isolated 3D mountain. Both the global momentum budget and the spatial flow response are examined to illustrate the impact of transient mountain waves on the large-scale flow. Additionally, aspects of the spatial response are quantified by potential vorticity inversion. Nearly linear cases exhibit a weak loss of domain-averaged absolute momentum despite the absence of wave breaking. This transient effect occurs because, over the time period of the large-scale flow, the momentum flux through the top boundary does not balance the surface pressure drag. Moreover, an adiabatic spatial redistribution of momentum is observed in these cases, which results in an increase (decrease) of zonally averaged zonal momentum south (north) of the mountain. For highly nonlinear cases, the zonally averaged momentum field shows a region of flow deceleration downstream of the mountain, flanked by broader regions of weak flow acceleration. Cancellation between the accelerating and decelerating regions results in weak fluctuations in the volume-averaged zonal momentum, suggesting that the mountain-induced circulations are primarily redistributing momentum. Potential vorticity anomalies develop in a region of wave breaking near the mountain, and induce local regions of flow acceleration and deceleration that alter the large-scale flow. A “perfect” conventional gravity wave–drag parameterization is implemented on a coarser domain not having a mountain, forced by the momentum flux distribution from the fully nonlinear simulation. This parameterization scheme produces a much weaker spatial response in the momentum field and it fails to produce enough flow deceleration near the 20 m s-1 jet. These results suggest that the potential vorticity sources attributable to the gravity wave–drag parameterization have a controlling effect on the longtime downstream influence of the mountain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of mountain-wave-induced momentum flux is examined through idealized numerical simulations during the passage of a time-evolving synoptic-scale flow over an isolated 3D mountain of height h. The dynamically consistent synoptic-scale flow U accelerates and decelerates with a period of 50 h; the maximum wind arrives over the mountain at 25 h. The synoptic-scale static stability N is constant, so the time dependence of the nonlinearity parameter, ℇ(t) = Nh/U(t), is symmetric about a minimum value at 25 h. The evolution of the vertical profile of momentum flux shows substantial asymmetry about the midpoint of the cycle even though the nonlinearity parameter is symmetric. Larger downward momentum fluxes are found during the accelerating phase, and the largest momentum fluxes occur in the mid- and upper troposphere before the maximum background flow arrives at the mountain. For a period of roughly 15 h, this vertical distribution of momentum flux accelerates the lower-tropospheric zonal-mean winds due to low-level momentum flux convergence. Conservation of wave action and Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin (WKB) ray tracing are used to reconstruct the time–altitude dependence of the mountain-wave momentum flux in a semianalytic procedure that is completely independent of the full numerical simulations. For quasi-linear cases, the reconstructions show good agreement with the numerical simulations, implying that the basic asymmetry obtained in the full numerical simulations may be interpreted using WKB theory. These results demonstrate that even slow variations in the mean flow, with a time scale of 2 days, play a dominant role in regulating the vertical profile of mountain-wave-induced momentum flux. The time evolution of cross-mountain pressure drag is also examined in this study. For almost-linear cases, the pressure drag is well predicted under steady-state linear theory by using the instantaneous incident flow. Nevertheless, for mountains high enough to preserve a moderate degree of nonlinearity when the synoptic-scale incident flow is strongest, the evolution of cross-mountain pressure drag is no longer symmetric about the time of maximum wind. A higher drag state is found when the cross-mountain flow is accelerating. These results suggest that the local character of the topographically induced disturbance cannot be solely determined by the instantaneous value of the nonlinearity parameter ℇ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica are rapidly retreating and contributing to sea level rise. Ice loss is occurring primarily via exposure to warm ocean water, which varies in response to local wind variability. There is evidence that retreat was initiated in the mid-20th century, but the perturbation that may have triggered retreat remains unknown. A leading hypothesis is that large pressure and wind anomalies in the 1940s drove exceptionally strong oceanic ice-shelf melting. However, the characteristics, drivers, and rarity of the atmospheric event remain poorly constrained. We investigate the 1940s atmospheric event using paleoclimate reconstructions and climate model simulations. The reconstructions show that large westerly wind anomalies occurred from ∼1938 –1942, a combined response to the very large El Niño event from 1940–1942 and other variability beginning years earlier. Climate model simulations provide evidence that events of similar magnitude and duration may occur tens to hundreds of times per 10 kyr of internal climate variability (∼0.2 to 2.5 occurrences per century). Our results suggest that the 1940s westerly event is unlikely to have been exceptional enough to be the sole explanation for the initiation of Amundsen Sea glacier retreat. Additional factors are likely needed to explain the onset of retreat in West Antarctica, such as naturally arising variability in ocean conditions prior to the 1940s or anthropogenically driven trends since the 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]