Recent autumn sea ice loss in the eastern Arctic enhanced by summer Asian-Pacific Oscillation.

Recent rapid Arctic sea ice loss was documented as combined results from anthropogenic forcing and climate system internal variability. However, the role of internal variability is not well understood. Here, we propose that the Asian-Pacific Oscillation (APO), an intrinsic atmospheric mode featuring out-of-phase variations in upper-tropospheric temperatures between Asia and the North Pacific, is one driver for autumn sea ice variability in the eastern Arctic. The positive summer APO favors warming of the mid-latitude North Atlantic sea surface temperatures. This warming persists to autumn and in turn triggers strong anticyclonic anomalies over the Barents-Kara-Laptev Seas and weak lower-tropospheric cyclonic anomalies over the East Siberian Sea, enhancing moisture transport into the eastern Arctic. Such changes consequently increase lower-tropospheric humidity, downwelling longwave radiation, and surface air temperature in the eastern Arctic, thereby melting sea ice. Hence, a recent tendency of the summer APO towards the positive phase accelerates autumn sea ice loss in the eastern Arctic.

East Antarctic cooling induced by decadal changes in Madden-Julian oscillation during austral summer.

While West Antarctica has experienced the most significant warming in the world, a profound cooling trend in austral summer was observed over East Antarctica (30°W to 150°E, 70° to 90°S) from 1979 to 2014. Previous studies attributed these changes to high-latitude atmospheric dynamics, stratospheric ozone change, and tropical sea surface temperature anomalies. We show that up to 20 to 40% of the observed summer cooling trend in East Antarctica was forced by decadal changes of the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO). Both observational analysis and climate model experiments indicate that the decadal changes in the MJO, characterized by less (more) atmospheric deep convection in the Indian Ocean (western Pacific) during the recent two decades, led to the net cooling trend over East Antarctica through modifying atmospheric circulations linked to poleward-propagating Rossby wave trains. This study highlights that changes in intraseasonal tropical climate patterns may result in important climate change over Antarctica.

Detected climatic change in global distribution of tropical cyclones.

Owing to the limited length of observed tropical cyclone data and the effects of multidecadal internal variability, it has been a challenge to detect trends in tropical cyclone activity on a global scale. However, there is a distinct spatial pattern of the trends in tropical cyclone frequency of occurrence on a global scale since 1980, with substantial decreases in the southern Indian Ocean and western North Pacific and increases in the North Atlantic and central Pacific. Here, using a suite of high-resolution dynamical model experiments, we show that the observed spatial pattern of trends is very unlikely to be explained entirely by underlying multidecadal internal variability; rather, external forcing such as greenhouse gases, aerosols, and volcanic eruptions likely played an important role. This study demonstrates that a climatic change in terms of the global spatial distribution of tropical cyclones has already emerged in observations and may in part be attributable to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

Influence of Tibetan Plateau snow cover on East Asian atmospheric circulation at medium-range time scales.

The responses of atmospheric variability to Tibetan Plateau (TP) snow cover (TPSC) at seasonal, interannual and decadal time scales have been extensively investigated. However, the atmospheric response to faster subseasonal variability of TPSC has been largely ignored. Here, we show that the subseasonal variability of TPSC, as revealed by daily data, is closely related to the subsequent East Asian atmospheric circulation at medium-range time scales (approximately 3-8 days later) during wintertime. TPSC acts as an elevated cooling source in the middle troposphere during wintertime and rapidly modulates the land surface thermal conditions over the TP. When TPSC is high, the upper-level geopotential height is lower, and the East Asia upper-level westerly jet stream is stronger. This finding improves our understanding of the influence of TPSC at multiple time scales. Furthermore, our work highlights the need to understand how atmospheric variability is rapidly modulated by fast snow cover changes.

Influence of the Madden-Julian oscillation on Tibetan Plateau snow cover at the intraseasonal time-scale.

The Tibetan Plateau (TP), known as the third pole of the Earth, has snow cover with intraseasonal to decadal variability that affects weather and climate both inside and outside the TP. However, the factors that generate the TP snow cover (TPSC) anomalies at the intraseasonal time-scale are unclear. This report reveals the influence of the Madden‒Julian oscillation (MJO), which is the most dominant component of the tropical intraseasonal variability, on TPSC. We focus on wintertime snow cover over the central and eastern TP, where the intraseasonal variability is large. TPSC increases/decreases in the MJO phases 8‒1/4-5, when the eastward-propagating MJO suppressed/enhanced convection locates over the Maritime Continent. Such a change in TPSC leads to the most dominant positive/negative anomalies of TPSC in the following phases 2‒3/6‒7 due to the non-significant change of TPSC in these phases. There is anomalous moisture advection over the upstream of the TP caused by MJO-excited large-scale atmospheric circulation. The advection process generates the low-frequency eastward-propagating anomalous water vapour from upstream to the TP that influences precipitation and, eventually, TPSC.