Articles | Volume 19, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-943-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-943-2023
Research article
 | 
09 May 2023
Research article |  | 09 May 2023

Quantifying the contribution of forcing and three prominent modes of variability to historical climate

Andrew P. Schurer, Gabriele C. Hegerl, Hugues Goosse, Massimo A. Bollasina, Matthew H. England, Michael J. Mineter, Doug M. Smith, and Simon F. B. Tett

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Cited articles

Abram, N. J., Mulvaney, R., Vimeux, F., Phipps, S. J., Turner, J., and England, M. H.: Evolution of the Southern Annular Mode during the Past Millennium, Nat. Clim. Change, 4, 564–569, https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2235, 2014a. 
Abram, N. J., Mulvaney, R., Vimeux, F., Phipps, S. J., Turner, J., and England, M. H.: NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology – Southern Annular Mode 1000 Year Reconstruction, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information [data set], https://doi.org/10.25921/3egm-zr66, 2014b. 
Allen, M. R. and. Stott P. A.: Estimating Signal Amplitudes in Optimal Fingerprinting, Part I: Theory, Clim. Dynam., 21, 477–491, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-003-0313-9, 2003. 
Barnston, A. G., Tippett, M. K., Ranganathan, M., and L'Heureux, M. L.: Deterministic Skill of ENSO Predictions from the North American Multimodel Ensemble, Clim. Dynam., 53, 7215–7234, https://doi.org/10.1007/S00382-017-3603-3, 2019. 
BAS – British Antarctic Survey: An observation-based Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode Index, BAS [data set], https://legacy.bas.ac.uk/met/gjma/sam.html (last access: 5 May 2023), 2023. 
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Short summary
We adopt an existing data assimilation technique to constrain a model simulation to follow three important modes of variability, the North Atlantic Oscillation, El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Southern Annular Mode. How it compares to the observed climate is evaluated, with improvements over simulations without data assimilation found over many regions, particularly the tropics, the North Atlantic and Europe, and discrepancies with global cooling following volcanic eruptions are reconciled.
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