C. Karamperidou

Surface Temperature Gradients as Diagnostic Indicators of Midlatitude Circulation Dynamics

AbstractZonal and meridional surface temperature gradients are considered to be determinants of large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns. However, there has been limited investigation of these gradients as diagnostic aids. Here, the twentieth-century variability in the Northern Hemisphere equator-to-pole temperature gradient (EPG) and the ocean–land temperature contrast (OLC) is explored. A secular trend in decreasing EPG and OLC is noted. Decadal and interannual (ENSO-related) variations in the joint distribution of EPG and OLC are identified, hinting at multistable climate states that may be indigenous to the climate or due to changing boundary forcings. The NH circulation patterns for cases in the tails of the joint distribution of EPG and OLC are also seen to be different. Given this context, this paper extends past efforts to develop insights into jet stream dynamics using the Lorenz-1984 model, which is forced directly and only by EPG and OLC. The joint probability distribution of jet stream and...

The importance of ENSO nonlinearities in tropical pacific response to external forcing

Tropical Pacific climate varies at interannual, decadal and centennial time scales, and exerts a significant influence on global climate. Climate model projections exhibit a large spread in the magnitude and pattern of tropical Pacific warming in response to greenhouse-gas forcing. Here, we show that part of this spread can be explained by model biases in the simulation of interannual variability, namely the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. We show that models that exhibit strong ENSO nonlinearities simulate a more accurate balance of ENSO feedbacks, and their projected tropical Pacific sea surface temperature warming pattern is closely linked to their projected ENSO response. Within this group, models with ENSO nonlinearity close to observed project stronger warming of the cold tongue, whereas models with stronger than observed ENSO nonlinearity project a more uniform warming of the tropical Pacific. These differences are also manifest in the projected changes of precipitation patterns, thereby highlighting that ENSO simulation biases may lead to potentially biased projections in long-term precipitation trends, with great significance for regional climate adaptation strategies.

A theoretical model of strong and moderate El Niño regimes

The existence of two regimes for El Niño (EN) events, moderate and strong, has been previously shown in the GFDL CM2.1 climate model and also suggested in observations. The two regimes have been proposed to originate from the nonlinearity in the Bjerknes feedback, associated with a threshold in sea surface temperature (

Implications of multi-scale sea level and climate variability for coastal resources

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Northern Hemisphere Meridional and Zonal Temperature Gradients and their Relation to Hydrologic Extremes at Mid-latitudes: Trends, Variability and Link to Climate Modes in Observations and Simulations

Tc) that needs to be exceeded for deep atmospheric convection to occur in the eastern Pacific. However, although the recent 2015–16 EN event provides a new data point consistent with the sparse strong EN regime, it is not enough to statistically reject the null hypothesis of a unimodal distribution based on observations alone. Nevertheless, we consider the possibility suggestive enough to explore it with a simple theoretical model based on the nonlinear Bjerknes feedback. In this study, we implemented this nonlinear mechanism in the recharge-discharge (RD) ENSO model and show that it is sufficient to produce the two EN regimes, i.e. a bimodal distribution in peak surface temperature (T) during EN events. The only modification introduced to the original RD model is that the net damping is suppressed when T exceeds

GCM Projections of Precipitation Extremes in the Mediterranean: Changes and Low Frequency Characteristics

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