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Ma W, Wang H, Chen G, Leung LR, Lu J, Rasch PJ, Fu Q, Kravitz B, Zou Y, Cassano JJ, Maslowski W. The role of interdecadal climate oscillations in driving Arctic atmospheric river trends. Nat Commun 2024; 15:2135. [PMID: 38459001 PMCID: PMC10923828 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45159-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/21/2023] [Accepted: 01/17/2024] [Indexed: 03/10/2024] Open
Abstract
Atmospheric rivers (ARs), intrusions of warm and moist air, can effectively drive weather extremes over the Arctic and trigger subsequent impact on sea ice and climate. What controls the observed multi-decadal Arctic AR trends remains unclear. Here, using multiple sources of observations and model experiments, we find that, contrary to the uniform positive trend in climate simulations, the observed Arctic AR frequency increases by twice as much over the Atlantic sector compared to the Pacific sector in 1981-2021. This discrepancy can be reconciled by the observed positive-to-negative phase shift of Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) and the negative-to-positive phase shift of Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which increase and reduce Arctic ARs over the Atlantic and Pacific sectors, respectively. Removing the influence of the IPO and AMO can reduce the projection uncertainties in near-future Arctic AR trends by about 24%, which is important for constraining projection of Arctic warming and the timing of an ice-free Arctic.
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Affiliation(s)
- Weiming Ma
- Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA.
| | - Hailong Wang
- Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA.
| | - Gang Chen
- Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - L Ruby Leung
- Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
| | - Jian Lu
- Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
| | - Philip J Rasch
- Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Qiang Fu
- Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Ben Kravitz
- Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
- Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
| | - Yufei Zou
- Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
| | - John J Cassano
- Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
- National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
- Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
| | - Wieslaw Maslowski
- Department of Oceanography, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA
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