The role of interdecadal climate oscillations in driving Arctic atmospheric river trends

Weiming Ma; Hailong Wang; Gang Chen; L Ruby Leung; Jian Lu; Philip J Rasch; Qiang Fu; Ben Kravitz; Yufei Zou; John J Cassano; Wieslaw Maslowski

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-45159-5

The role of interdecadal climate oscillations in driving Arctic atmospheric river trends

Nat Commun. 2024 Mar 8;15(1):2135. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-45159-5.

Authors

Weiming Ma¹, Hailong Wang², Gang Chen³, L Ruby Leung⁴, Jian Lu⁴, Philip J Rasch⁵, Qiang Fu⁵, Ben Kravitz^{4

6}, Yufei Zou⁴, John J Cassano^{7

8

9}, Wieslaw Maslowski¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA. weiming.ma@pnnl.gov.
² Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA. Hailong.Wang@pnnl.gov.
³ Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁴ Atmospheric, Climate, and Earth Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA.
⁵ Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
⁶ Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA.
⁷ Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁸ National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁹ Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Oceanography, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA.

Abstract

Atmospheric rivers (ARs), intrusions of warm and moist air, can effectively drive weather extremes over the Arctic and trigger subsequent impact on sea ice and climate. What controls the observed multi-decadal Arctic AR trends remains unclear. Here, using multiple sources of observations and model experiments, we find that, contrary to the uniform positive trend in climate simulations, the observed Arctic AR frequency increases by twice as much over the Atlantic sector compared to the Pacific sector in 1981-2021. This discrepancy can be reconciled by the observed positive-to-negative phase shift of Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) and the negative-to-positive phase shift of Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which increase and reduce Arctic ARs over the Atlantic and Pacific sectors, respectively. Removing the influence of the IPO and AMO can reduce the projection uncertainties in near-future Arctic AR trends by about 24%, which is important for constraining projection of Arctic warming and the timing of an ice-free Arctic.

Grants and funding

DE-AC05-76RLO1830/DOE | SC | Biological and Environmental Research (BER)