The profound influence of the North Atlantic Ocean on Northeast Asia: A comprehensive multi-model study

Abstract

We assess the effects of the North Atlantic Sea surface temperature multidecadal variability on Northeast Asia using a set of sensitivity experiments (with a total of 530 ensemble members). We show that a warming of the North Atlantic Ocean leads to a strong and robust increase in temperature over Northeast Asia, which is replicated by a large majority of ensemble members. We show that the effect of the North Atlantic on Northeast Asia is model and season-dependent. We focus on two seasons, for which response to the North Atlantic Ocean is the most robust (autumn) and the less robust (spring) as indicated by the number of models that simulate a statistically significant change in surface air temperature. We use a clustering method to identify the sources of differences between models in simulating the effects of warming in the North Atlantic. We find that the primary mechanism linking the North Atlantic to Northeast Asia is a perturbation of the circumglobal teleconnection pattern (i.e., of the upper tropospheric atmospheric circulation), which allows modulation of the near-surface atmospheric circulation and an increase in temperature over East Asia. A second mechanism is related to the influence of the North Atlantic on the Pacific Ocean and the resulting effects on atmospheric circulation over Northeast Asia.