2012: Atlantic Ocean influence on a shift in European climate

• Main Authors: Rowan T. Sutton, Buwen Dong
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Pacific; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.654.3619; http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/30109/1/NG_paper.pdf

European climate exhibits variability on a wide range of timescales. Understanding the nature and drivers of this variability is an essential step in developing robust climate predictions and risk assessments. Previous research has suggested that the Atlantic Ocean may be an important driver of variability in European climate on decadal timescales 1-6, but the importance of this influence in recent decades has been unclear, partly because of difficulties in separating the Atlantic Ocean’s influence from other influences such as the tropical Pacific Ocean and the stratosphere 7-12. Here we show that, during the 1990s, there was a substantial shift in European climate towards a pattern characterised by anomalously mild, wet, summers in northern Europe, and hot, dry, summers in Southern Europe, with related shifts in spring and autumn. These changes in climate coincided with a major warming of the North Atlantic Ocean 13, towards a state last seen in the 1950s. The patterns of change in the 1990s are consistent with previous changes that have been attributed to the North Atlantic Ocean 4,6, and provide compelling