Alfredo Ruiz-Barradas

Understanding the variability of atmospheric rivers (ARs) on subseasonal time scales is pivotal for efficient water resource management along the west coast of North America. ARs during 1980–2018 based on the Modern‐Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 are analyzed to quantify the modulation of winter (December–February) landfalling ARs in the western US by leading subseasonal teleconnections, focusing on pentad evolution rather than seasonal‐mean patterns. The growth phase of the North Pacific Oscillation/West Pacific (NPO/WP) teleconnection—the second leading pattern in 200‐hPa geopotential heights in boreal winter—is found to be particularly influential in modulating the number of landfalling ARs in this region. In the positive phase of NPO/WP growth, the presence of anomalous low pressure centered just south of Alaska (i.e., a strengthening of the Aleutian Low) and anomalous high pressure around Hawaii results in moisture convergence in the central and eastern Pacific, bringing southwesterly moisture fluxes to the coast and inland. The modulation by NPO/WP is stronger than by commonly‐considered climate variability modes, such as the Pacific/North American (PNA) pattern. Although southwesterly fluxes are stronger over the Pacific Ocean during the positive phase of PNA, they tend to transition to southerly fluxes before extending inland, resulting in smaller overland impacts in the western US. The analysis of temporal evolutions indicates AR activity peaks 5 days after the mature phase of NPO/WP growth, as in the case of PNA. Overall, the study suggests potential subseasonal predictability of US West Coast ARs from incipient‐phase knowledge of the leading teleconnection patterns, especially the NPO/WP.

The anomalous decadal warming of the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean (SPNA), and the northward spreading of this warm water, has been linked to rapid Arctic sea ice loss and more frequent cold European winters. Recently, variations in this heat transport have also been reported to covary with global warming slowdown/acceleration periods via a Pacific climate response. We here examine the role of SPNA temperature variability in this Atlantic‐Pacific climate connectivity. We find that the evolution of ocean heat content anomalies from the subtropics to the subpolar region, likely due to ocean circulation changes, coincides with a basin‐wide Atlantic warming/cooling. This induces an Atlantic‐Pacific sea surface temperature seesaw, which in turn, strengthens/weakens the Walker circulation and amplifies the Pacific decadal variability that triggers pronounced global‐scale atmospheric circulation anomalies. We conclude that the decadal oceanic variability in the SPNA is an essential component of the tropical interactions between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

This is the first part of a three-part paper on North American climate in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) that evaluates the historical simulations of continental and regional climatology with a focus on a core set of 17 models. The authors evaluate the models for a set of basic surface climate and hydrological variables and their extremes for the continent. This is supplemented by evaluations for selected regional climate processes relevant to North American climate, including cool season western Atlantic cyclones, the North American monsoon, the U.S. Great Plains low-level jet, and Arctic sea ice. In general, the multimodel ensemble mean represents the observed spatial patterns of basic climate and hydrological variables but with large variability across models and regions in the magnitude and sign of errors. No single model stands out as being particularly better or worse across all analyses, although some models consistently outperform the others for certain variables across most regions and seasons and higher-resolution models tend to perform better for regional processes. The CMIP5 multimodel ensemble shows a slight improvement relative to CMIP3 models in representing basic climate variables, in terms of the mean and spread, although performance has decreased for some models. Improvements in CMIP5 model performance are noticeable for some regional climate processes analyzed, such as the timing of the North American monsoon. The results of this paper have implications for the robustness of future projections of climate and its associated impacts, which are examined in the third part of the paper.

This is the second part of a three-part paper on North American climate in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) that evaluates the twentieth-century simulations of intraseasonal to multidecadal variability and teleconnections with North American climate. Overall, the multimodel ensemble does reasonably well at reproducing observed variability in several aspects, but it does less well at capturing observed teleconnections, with implications for future projections examined in part three of this paper. In terms of intraseasonal variability, almost half of the models examined can reproduce observed variability in the eastern Pacific and most models capture the midsummer drought over Central America. The multimodel mean replicates the density of traveling tropical synoptic-scale disturbances but with large spread among the models. On the other hand, the coarse resolution of the models means that tropical cyclone frequencies are underpredicted in the Atlantic and eastern North Pacific. The frequency and mean amplitude of ENSO are generally well reproduced, although teleconnections with North American climate are widely varying among models and only a few models can reproduce the east and central Pacific types of ENSO and connections with U.S. winter temperatures. The models capture the spatial pattern of Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) variability and its influence on continental temperature and West Coast precipitation but less well for the wintertime precipitation. The spatial representation of the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) is reasonable, but the magnitude of SST anomalies and teleconnections are poorly reproduced. Multidecadal trends such as the warming hole over the central–southeastern United States and precipitation increases are not replicated by the models, suggesting that observed changes are linked to natural variability.

The Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) site data are analyzed to provide insight into atmosphere–land surface interactions generating summertime precipitation variability. Pentad-averaged (5 days) data are analyzed; the average is long enough to suppress synoptic variability but sufficiently short to resolve atmosphere–land surface interactions. Intercomparison with the precipitation-assimilating North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) helps with in-depth investigation of the processes. The analysis seeks to ascertain the process sequence, especially the role of evapotranspiration and soil-moisture–radiation feedbacks in the generation of regional precipitation variability at this temporal scale. Transported moisture dominates over evapotranspiration in precipitation variability over the region, from both magnitude of the contribution to regional water balance and its apparent temporal lead at pentad resolution. Antecedent and contemporaneous evapotranspiration are found to be negatively correlated with precipitation, albeit statistically insignificant; only lagging correlations are positive, peaking at 2-pentad lag following precipitation, substantiating the authors’ characterization of the water balance over SGP, and extending the authors’ previous findings on the dominance of moisture flux convergence in generating precipitation variability at monthly scales. Precipitation episodes are linked with net negative surface radiation anomalies (i.e., with an energy-deprived land surface state that cannot fuel evapotranspiration), ruling out radiatively driven positive feedback on precipitation. Although the net longwave signal is positive because of a colder land surface (less upward terrestrial radiation), it is more than offset by the cloudiness-related reduction in downward shortwave radiation. Thus, ARM (NARR) data do not support the soil-moisture–precipitation feedback hypothesis over the SGP at pentad time scales; however, it may work at subpentad resolution and over other regions.

The present work assesses spring and summer precipitation over North America as well as summer precipitation variability over the central United States and its SST links in simulations of the twentieth-century climate and projections of the twenty-first- and twenty-second-century climates for the A1B scenario. The observed spatial structure of spring and summer precipitation poses a challenge for models, particularly over the western and central United States. Tendencies in spring precipitation in the twenty-first century agree with the observed ones at the end of the twentieth century over a wetter north-central and a drier southwestern United States, and a drier southeastern Mexico. Projected wetter springs over the Great Plains in the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries are associated with an increase in the number of extreme springs. In contrast, projected summer tendencies have demonstrated little consistency. The associated observed changes in SSTs bear the global warming footprint, which is not well captured in the twentieth-century climate simulations. Precipitation variability over the Great Plains presents a coherent picture in spring but not in summer. Models project an increase in springtime precipitation variability owing to an increased number of extreme springs. The number of extreme droughty (pluvial) events during the spring–fall part of the year is under(over)estimated in the twentieth century without consistent projections. Summer precipitation variability over the Great Plains is linked to SSTs over the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, with no apparent ENSO link in spite of the exaggerated variability in the equatorial Pacific in climate simulations; this has been identified already in observations and atmospheric models forced with historical SSTs. This link is concealed due to the increased warming in the twenty-first century. Deficiencies in land surface–atmosphere interactions and global teleconnections in the climate models prevent them from a better portrayal of summer precipitation variability in the central United States.