Masahide Kimoto

Improved Climate Simulation by MIROC5: Mean States, Variability, and Climate Sensitivity

Abstract A new version of the atmosphere–ocean general circulation model cooperatively produced by the Japanese research community, known as the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate (MIROC), has recently been developed. A century-long control experiment was performed using the new version (MIROC5) with the standard resolution of the T85 atmosphere and 1° ocean models. The climatological mean state and variability are then compared with observations and those in a previous version (MIROC3.2) with two different resolutions (medres, hires), coarser and finer than the resolution of MIROC5. A few aspects of the mean fields in MIROC5 are similar to or slightly worse than MIROC3.2, but otherwise the climatological features are considerably better. In particular, improvements are found in precipitation, zonal mean atmospheric fields, equatorial ocean subsurface fields, and the simulation of El Nino–Southern Oscillation. The difference between MIROC5 and the previous model is larger than that between th...

Decadal climate prediction: An update from the trenches

This paper provides an update on research in the relatively new and fast-moving field of decadal climate prediction, and addresses the use of decadal climate predictions not only for potential users of such information but also for improving our understanding of processes in the climate system. External forcing influences the predictions throughout, but their contributions to predictive skill become dominant after most of the improved skill from initialization with observations vanishes after about 6–9 years. Recent multimodel results suggest that there is relatively more decadal predictive skill in the North Atlantic, western Pacific, and Indian Oceans than in other regions of the world oceans. Aspects of decadal variability of SSTs, like the mid-1970s shift in the Pacific, the mid-1990s shift in the northern North Atlantic and western Pacific, and the early-2000s hiatus, are better represented in initialized hindcasts compared to uninitialized simulations. There is evidence of higher skill in initialize...

A diagnostic study of the impact of El Niño on the precipitation in China

The impact of El Niño on the precipitation in China for different seasons are investigated diagnostically. It is found that El Niño can influence the precipitation in China significantly during its mature phase. In the Northern winter, spring and autumn, the positive precipitation anomalies are found in the southern part of China during the El Niño mature phase. In the Northern summer, the patterns of the precipitation anomalies in the El Niño mature phase are different from those in the other seasons. The negative precipitation anomalies appear in both southern and northern parts of China, while in between around the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Huaihe River valleys the precipitation anomalies tend to be positive.In the Northern winter, spring and autumn, the physical process by which El Niño affects the precipitation in the southern part of China can be explained by the features of the circulation anomalies over East Asia during the El Niño mature phase (Zhang et al., 1996). The appearance of an anticyclonic anomaly to the north of the maritime continent in the lower troposphere during the El Niño mature phase intensifies the subtropical high in the western Pacific and makes it shift westward. The associated southwesterly flow is responsible for the positive precipitation anomalies in the southern part of China. In the Northern summer, the intensified western Pacific subtropical high covers the southeastern periphery of China so that the precipitation there becomes less. In addition, the weakening of the Indian monsoon provides less moisture inflow to the northern part of China.

Global projections of changing risks of floods and droughts in a changing climate

Abstract Simulated daily discharge derived from a relatively high-resolution (approximately 1.1-degree) general circulation model was used to investigate future projections of extremes in river discharge under global warming. The frequency of floods was projected to increase over many regions, except those including North America and central to western Eurasia. The drought frequency was projected to increase globally, while regions such as northern high latitudes, eastern Australia, and eastern Eurasia showed a decrease or no significant changes. Changes in flood and drought are not explained simply by changes in annual precipitation, heavy precipitation, or differences between precipitation and evapotranspiration. Several regions were projected to have increases in both flood frequency and drought frequency. Such regions show a decrease in the number of precipitation days, but an increase in days with heavy rain. Several regions show shifts in the flood season from springtime snowmelt to the summer period of heavy precipitation.

Multiple Flow Regimes in the Northern Hemisphere Winter. Part I: Methodology and Hemispheric Regimes

Abstract Recurrent and persistent flow patterns are identified by examining multivariate probability density functions (PDFs) in the phase space of large-scale atmospheric motions. This idea is pursued systematically here in the hope of clarifying the extent to which intraseasonal variability can be described and understood in terms of multiple flow regimes. Bivariate PDFs of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) wintertime anomaly heights at 700 mb are examined in the present paper, using a 37-year dataset. The two-dimensional phase plane is defined by the two leading empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) of the anomaly fields. PDFs on this plane exhibit synoptically intriguing and statistically significant inhomogeneities on the periphery of the distribution. It is shown that these inhomogeneities are due to the existence of persistent and recurrent anomaly patterns, well-known as dominant teleconnection patterns; that is, the Pacific/North American (PNA) pattern, its reverse, and zonal and blocked phases of the...

Pacific decadal oscillation hindcasts relevant to near-term climate prediction

Decadal-scale climate variations over the Pacific Ocean and its surroundings are strongly related to the so-called Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) which is coherent with wintertime climate over North America and Asian monsoon, and have important impacts on marine ecosystems and fisheries. In a near-term climate prediction covering the period up to 2030, we require knowledge of the future state of internal variations in the climate system such as the PDO as well as the global warming signal. We perform sets of ensemble hindcast and forecast experiments using a coupled atmosphere-ocean climate model to examine the predictability of internal variations on decadal timescales, in addition to the response to external forcing due to changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, volcanic activity, and solar cycle variations. Our results highlight that an initialization of the upper-ocean state using historical observations is effective for successful hindcasts of the PDO and has a great impact on future predictions. Ensemble hindcasts for the 20th century demonstrate a predictive skill in the upper-ocean temperature over almost a decade, particularly around the Kuroshio-Oyashio extension (KOE) and subtropical oceanic frontal regions where the PDO signals are observed strongest. A negative tendency of the predicted PDO phase in the coming decade will enhance the rising trend in surface air-temperature (SAT) over east Asia and over the KOE region, and suppress it along the west coasts of North and South America and over the equatorial Pacific. This suppression will contribute to a slowing down of the global-mean SAT rise.

Initialized near-term regional climate change prediction

Climate models are seen by many to be unverifiable. However, near-term climate predictions up to 10 years into the future carried out recently with these models can be rigorously verified against observations. Near-term climate prediction is a new information tool for the climate adaptation and service communities, which often make decisions on near-term time scales, and for which the most basic information is unfortunately very scarce. The Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project set of co-ordinated climate-model experiments includes a set of near-term predictions in which several modelling groups participated and whose forecast quality we illustrate here. We show that climate forecast systems have skill in predicting the Earths temperature at regional scales over the past 50 years and illustrate the trustworthiness of their predictions. Most of the skill can be attributed to changes in atmospheric composition, but also partly to the initialization of the predictions.

Multiple Flow Regimes in the Northern Hemisphere Winter. Part II: Sectorial Regimes and Preferred Transitions

Abstract This paper presents an observational analysis of recurrent flow patterns in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) winter, based on a 37-year series of daily 700-mb height anomalies. Large-scale anomaly patterns that appear repeatedly and persist beyond synoptic time scales are identified by searching for local maxima of probability density in a phase subspace, which is spanned by the leading empirical orthogenal functions (EOFs). By using an angular probability density function (PDF), we focus on the shape, not magnitude, of the anomaly patterns. The PDF estimate is nonparametric; that is, our algorithm makes no a priori assumption on symmetry with respect to the climatological mean as in one-point correlation and rotated EOF analyses. The local density maxima are searched by iterative bump hunting. Based on observed partial decoupling between the Pacific (PAC) and the Atlantic-Eurasian (ATL) sectors, the classification algorithm is applied separately to each of the two. Seven PAC and six ATL patterns are...

Historical Ocean Subsurface Temperature Analysis with Error Estimates

Abstract An objective analysis of monthly ocean subsurface temperatures from 1950 to 1998 is carried out. The analysis scheme and the results with estimated analysis errors are presented. The analysis domain is global with a horizontal grid of 1° × 1° and 14 vertical levels in the upper 500 m. Subsurface temperature observations used in the objective analysis are archived by the National Ocean Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, together with those collected through the global telecommunication system and domestic communication lines in Japan. All the observations are preprocessed by quality control and data selection procedures developed in this study. Together with these observations, three-dimensional fields of the upper-ocean temperature are optimally estimated using a variational technique. To ensure smooth and continuous vertical temperature profiles, a constraint term is introduced to the cost function that is minimized in the analysis. In addition, the analysis sche...

On the Persistence of Decadal SST Anomalies in the North Atlantic

Abstract Historical wintertime sea surface temperature (SST) data show that a sandwich pattern dominates on the decadal timescales in the North Atlantic, at least after the 1970s. The authors investigated how such decadal SST anomalies can survive against local thermal feedback, which acts to dampen them rapidly. At the surface, winter SST anomalies have a negligible projection with the subsequent summer anomalies while they show a significant projection with the SST anomalies in the next winter. On the other hand, observed summer temperature anomalies below the mixed layer tend to have the same sign as the previous winter SST anomalies, although the magnitude of the former is roughly one-third of the latter. This suggests that a reemergence mechanism of SST anomalies associated with the seasonal cycle of the mixed layer depth (MLD), which has been verified by Alexander and Deser, helps maintain the decadal SST anomalies. In order to examine this scenario, a mixed layer model driven by daily atmospheric d...