Abstract
In this study, the impact of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) on the China winter temperature (CWT) was assessed on an interdecadal timescale, and the capacities of the 35 models of the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) were assessed by simulating the PDO-CWT teleconnection. The Met Office Hadley Centre’s sea ice and sea surface temperature (HadISST) were used as the observational data, and Climatic Research Unit (CRU) datasets provided long-term temperature data for the 1901–2005 period. By calculating the spatial correlation coefficient between the PDO index and winter temperature in China, thirteen CMIP5 models close to the HadISST datasets were selected for this study. These models were averaged as the good multi-model ensemble (GOODMME), and the PDO-CWT spatial correlation between the GOODMME and the observations was 0.80. Overall, the correlation coefficient between the PDO index and atmospheric circulation suggests that the GOODMME produces the same excellent results as do the observations. The results also verify the GOODMME’s superiority in simulating the impact of the PDO on winter temperatures in China. The possible mechanisms underlying the impact of the different phases of the PDO on the CWT are also described.
Highlights
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is one of the most dominant patterns affecting the sea surface temperature (SST) in the north Pacific on the decadal scale, and it is defined as the leading principal component of sea temperatures surface temperatures (SSTs) anomalies in the north Pacific
The PDO plays a vital role in climate change, but the PDO index is arbitrarily based on the outputs of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models
To assess the capacity of the CMIP5 models to simulate the PDO, 35 models were collected for comparison with the observations
Summary
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is one of the most dominant patterns affecting the sea surface temperature (SST) in the north Pacific on the decadal scale, and it is defined as the leading principal component of SST anomalies in the north Pacific. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), along with general circulation models (CGCMs), has great potential for use in the study of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and PDO mechanisms, but has been proven to be promising in predicting future global climate change [17,18]. Recent assessments have noted that 11 selected models could effectively reproduce the constructive interference between ENSO and PDO by analyzing their similar and different phases [23] In these studies, the research duration of evaluating the capacity of the simulation was only approximately 50 years, since the PDO time series has a slowly varying component [3], and long-term changes cannot be adequately represented if short-term statistical information is used for reconstruction [24].
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