RT Journal Article
T1 Dynamical properties of the North Atlantic atmospheric circulation in the past 150 years in CMIP5 models and the 20CRv2c reanalysis
A1 Rodrigues, David
A1 Álvarez Castro, María del Carmen
A1 Faranda, Davide
A1 Yiou, Pascal
A1 Messori, Gabriele
A1 Robin, Yoann
K1 Atmospheric circulation
K1 Nonlinear dynamics
K1 Statistical techniques
K1 Climate models
AB It is of fundamental importance to evaluate the ability of climate models to capture the large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns and, in the context of a rapidly increasing greenhouse forcing, the robustness of the changes simulated in these patterns over time. Here we approach this problem from an innovative point of view based on dynamical systems theory. We characterize the atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic in the CMIP5 historical simulations (1851–2000) in terms of two instantaneous metrics: local dimension of the attractor and stability of phase-space trajectories. We then use these metrics to compare the models to the Twentieth Century Reanalysis version 2c (20CRv2c) over the same historical period. The comparison suggests that (i) most models capture to some degree the median attractor properties, and models with finer grids generally perform better; (ii) in most models the extremes in the dynamical systems metrics match large-scale patterns similar to those found in the reanalysis; (iii) changes in the attractor properties observed for the ensemble-mean 20CRv2c are artifacts resulting from inhomogeneities in the standard deviation of the ensemble over time; and (iv) the long-term trends in local dimension observed among the 56 members of the 20CR ensemble have the same sign as those observed in the CMIP5 multimodel mean, although the multimodel trend is much weaker.
PB AMS journals
YR 2018
FD 2018-08-01
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10433/22863
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10433/22863
LA en
NO Journal of Climate, Vol. 31, Núm. 15, pp. 6097-6111
NO Departamento Sistemas Físicos, Químicos y Naturales
DS RIO
RD May 8, 2026