Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Tropical Pacific impacts on cooling North American winters

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 970–974 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

The North American continent generally experienced a cooling trend in winter over the early 2000s. This cooling trend represented a significant deviation from expected anthropogenic warming and so requires explanation. Previous studies indicate that climate variations in the tropical Pacific contributed to many mid-latitude climate variations over the early twenty-first century. Here we show using large ensembles of fully coupled, partially coupled and uncoupled model simulations that in northwest North America the winter cooling was primarily a remote response to climate fluctuations in the tropical Pacific. By contrast, in central North America the winter cooling appears to have resulted from a relatively rare fluctuation in mid-latitude circulation that was unrelated to the tropical Pacific. Our results highlight how decadal climate signals—both remote and local in origin—can together offset anthropogenic warming to produce continental-scale cooling.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Observed winter trends from 2001–2002 to 2013–2014.
Figure 2: Anomalies associated with a weakened tropical Pacific temperature gradient on interannual and decadal timescales.
Figure 3: Simulated and observed winter trends from 2001–2002 to 2013–2014 in North American SAT and the tropical Pacific SAT gradient.
Figure 4: Climate trends in winter from 2001–2002 to 2013–2014 from fully coupled, partially coupled and uncoupled model simulations.
Figure 5: Probability of an unusually cold central North American winter.
Figure 6: Composite of climate trends in fully coupled simulations with the largest central North American winter cooling.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Cohen, J. L., Furtado, J. C., Barlow, M., Alexeev, V. A. & Cherry, J. E. Asymmetric seasonal temperature trends. Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, L04705 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Hartmann, D. L. Pacific sea surface temperature and the winter of 2014. Geophys. Res. Lett. 42, 1894–1902 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Palmer, T. Record-breaking winters and global climate change. Science 344, 803–804 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Yu, B. & Zhang, X. A physical analysis of the severe 2013/2014 cold winter in North America. J. Geophys. Res. 120, 149–165 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  5. England, M. et al. Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus. Nature Clim. Change 4, 222–227 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Fyfe, J. C. et al. Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown. Nature Clim. Change 6, 224–228 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Ding, Q. et al. Tropical forcing of the recent rapid Arctic warming in northeastern Canada and Greenland. Nature 509, 209–212 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Delworth, T. L., Zeng, F., Rosati, A., Vecchi, G. A. & Wittenberg, A. T. A link between the hiatus in global warming and North American drought. J. Clim. 28, 3834–3845 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Trenberth, K. E., Fasullo, J. T., Branstator, G. & Phillips, A. S. Seasonal aspects of the recent pause in surface warming. Nature Clim. Change 4, 911–916 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kosaka, Y. & Xie, S.-P. Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling. Nature 501, 403–407 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Alexander, M. A. et al. The atmospheric bridge: the influence of ENSO teleconnections on air–sea interaction over the global oceans. J. Clim. 15, 2205–2231 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Seager, R. et al. Causes and Predictability of the 2011–14 California Drought NOAA Drought Task Force Assessment Report (NOAA, 2015); http://cpo.noaa.gov/ClimatePrograms/ModelingAnalysisPredictionsandProjections/MAPPTaskForces/DroughtTaskForce1/CaliforniaDrought.aspx

    Google Scholar 

  13. Arora, V. K. et al. Carbon emission limits required to satisfy future representative concentration pathways of greenhouse gases. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, 3–8 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Hurrell, J. W. et al. The community earth system model: a framework for collaborative research. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 94, 1339–1360 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Meinshausen, M. et al. The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions from 1765 to 2300. Climatic Change 109, 213–241 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Saenko, O. A., Fyfe, J. C., Swart, N. C., Lee, W. G. & England, M. H. Influence of tropical wind on global temperature from months to decades. Clim. Dynam. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00382-015-2958-6 (in the press).

  17. Palmer, T. & Mansfield, D. Response of two atmospheric general circulation models to sea-surface temperature anomalies in the tropical east and west Pacific. Nature 310, 483–485 (1984).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Simmons, A., Wallace, J. M. & Branstator, G. Barotropic wave propagation and instability, and atmospheric teleconnection patterns. J. Atmos. Sci. 40, 1363–1392 (1983).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Hansen, J., Ruedy, R., Sato, M. & Lo, K. Global surface temperature change. Rev. Geophys. 48, RG4004 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Dee, D. P. et al. The ERA-interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 137, 553–597 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Adler, R. F. et al. The version-2 global precipitation climatology project (GPCP) monthly precipitation analysis (1979–present). J. Hydrometeorol. 4, 1147–1167 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. de Boisséson, E., Balmaseda, M. A., Abdalla, S., Källén, E. & Janssen, P. A. E. M. How robust is the recent strengthening of the Tropical Pacific trade winds? Geophys. Res. Lett. 41, 4398–4405 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Compo, G. P. et al. The twentieth century reanalysis project. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 137, 1–28 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Kay, J. E. et al. The Community Earth System Model (CESM) large ensemble project: a community resource for studying climate change in the presence of internal climate variability. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 96, 1333–1349 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. von Salzen, K. et al. The Canadian Fourth Generation Atmospheric Global Climate Model (CanAM4). Part I: representation of physical processes. Atmos.-Ocean 51, 104–125 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Rayner, N. A. Global analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice, and night marine air temperature since the late nineteenth century. J. Geophys. Res. 108, 4407 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank O. Saenko and W. Lee for helping design and perform the pacemaker simulations, J. Scinocca for helping extend the CanESM2 large ensemble, Y. Jiao for technical assistance, N. Gillett, B. Merryfield and N. Swart for their comments on an earlier draft, C. Fletcher for helpful discussions and the CESM group for providing the CESM large ensemble model output.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 2Y2, Canada

    Michael Sigmond & John C. Fyfe

Authors
  1. Michael Sigmond
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. John C. Fyfe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

M.S. designed and performed the uncoupled simulations, helped to carry out the analysis and wrote the initial draft. J.C.F. helped design the pacemaker experiments, helped with the analysis and edited the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Sigmond.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (PDF 1368 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Sigmond, M., Fyfe, J. Tropical Pacific impacts on cooling North American winters. Nature Clim Change 6, 970–974 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3069

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3069

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing