NP Division Campfire: Perspectives on Climate featuring Michael Mann

This week Michael Mann will discuss “The rise and fall of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation”.

For several decades the existence of interdecadal and multidecadal internal climate oscillations has been asserted by numerous studies based on analyses of historical observations, paleoclimatic data and climate model simulations. We use a combination of observational data and state-of-the-art forced and control climate model simulations to demonstrate the absence of consistent evidence for decadal or longer-term internal oscillatory signals that are distinguishable from climatic noise. Only variability in the interannual range associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation is found to be distinguishable from the noise background. A distinct (40–50 year timescale) spectral peak that appears in global surface temperature observations appears to reflect the response of the climate system to both anthropogenic and natural forcing rather than any intrinsic internal oscillation. These findings have implications both for the validity of previous studies attributing certain long-term climate trends (e.g. in Atlantic hurricane activity) to internal low-frequency climate cycles and for prospects for decadal climate predictability.

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