The hammam effect or how a warm ocean enhances large scale atmospheric predictability

Abstract

The atmosphere’s chaotic nature limits its short-term predictability. Furthermore, there is little knowledge on how the difficulty of forecasting weather may be affected by anthropogenic climate change. Here, we address this question by employing metrics issued from dynamical systems theory to describe the atmospheric circulation and infer the dynamical properties of the climate system. Specifically, we evaluate the changes in the sub-seasonal predictability of the large-scale atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic for the historical period and under anthropogenic forcing, using centennial reanalyses and CMIP5 simulations. For the future period, most datasets point to an increase in the atmosphere’s predictability. AMIP simulations with 4K warmer oceans and 4 × atmospheric CO2 concentrations highlight the prominent role of a warmer ocean in driving this increase. We term this the hammam effect. Such effect is linked to enhanced zonal atmospheric patterns, which are more predictable than meridional configurations.