Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

ScienceDirect
Advances in Climate Change Research 9 (2018) 95e101
www.keaipublishing.com/en/journals/accr/

Response of North Pacific and North Atlantic decadal variability to weak

global warming
WU Sheng a,*, LIU Zheng-Yu a,b, CHENG Jun c, LI Chun d
a
Laboratory for Climate and Ocean-Atmosphere Studies (LaCOAS) and Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University,
Beijing 100871, China
b
Atmospheric Science Program, Department of Geography, Ohio State University, Columbus 43210, USA
c
Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster, Ministry of Education (KLME)/Joint International Research Laboratory of Climate and Environment Chenge
(ILCEC), Climate Dynamics Research Center, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
d
Physical Oceanography Lab, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China
Received 25 September 2017; revised 30 January 2018; accepted 30 March 2018
Available online 25 April 2018

Abstract

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) are the two dominant low-frequency modes in the
climate system. This research focused on the response of these two modes under weak global warming. Observational data were derived from the
Hadley Center Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperature dataset (HadISST) and coupled model outputs from the Coupled Model Intercomparison
Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Changes in PDO and AMV were examined using four models (bcc-csm1-1, CCSM4, IPSL-CM5A-LR, and MPI-
ESM-LR) with long weak global warming scenarios (RCP2.6). These models captured the two low-frequency modes in both pre-industrial
run and RCP2.6 run. Under weak global warming, the time scales of PDO and AMV significantly decreased while the amplitude only
slightly decreased. Interestingly, the standard deviation of the North Pacific sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) decreased only in decadal
time scale, and that of the North Atlantic SSTA decreased both in interannual and decadal time scales. The coupled system consists of a slow
ocean component, which has a decadal time scale, and a fast atmospheric component, which is calculated by subtracting the decadal from the
total. Results suggest that under global warming, PDO change is dominated by ocean dynamics, and AMV change is dominated by ocean
dynamics and stochastic atmosphere forcing.

Keywords: Pacific decadal oscillation; Atlantic multidecadal variability; RCP2.6

1. Introduction
Decadal climate variability, such as Pacific decadal oscilla-
tion (PDO, Mantua et al., 1997) and Atlantic multidecadal
variability (AMV, Delworth et al., 1993), has received
increasing attention in climate research because of its impor-
tance for near-term climate forecast (Hawkins and Sutton,
2009; IPCC, 2013) and its role in modulating anthropogenic
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wusheng4581@163.com (WU S.).
Peer review under responsibility of National Climate Center (China
Meteorological Administration).
global warming (Kosaka and Xie, 2013; England et al., 2014).
Significant progresses have been achieved to understand
decadal climate variability (Liu, 2012), yet several questions
remain. One important question is how these decadal variability
modes change in response to global warming. Recent studies of
future climate projections suggest that, in response to strong
global warming, decadal variability exhibits significant
changes. In particular, the time scale and amplitude of decadal
variability in the North Pacific SST (PDO) and Atlantic
meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) (Fang et al., 2014;
Cheng et al., 2016; Zhang and Delworth, 2006; Wang and Li,
2017) can be reduced substantially. Previous analyses are pre-
liminary because of the limited data in the analysis; therefore,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accre.2018.03.001
1674-9278/Copyright © 2018, National Climate Center (China Meteorological Administration). Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
96 WU S. et al. / Advances in Climate Change Research 9 (2018) 95e101
the robustness of the response of decadal variability to global
warming remains to be further studied, particularly in the case
of weak global warming comparable with 1.5  C global
warming. The connection between the Pacific and Atlantic has
been investigated. The western tropical Pacific sea surface
temperature is similar to Atlantic multidecadal variability (Sun
et al., 2017). Here we analyze the response of PDO and AMV to
the weak global warming scenario (RCP2.6) in several global
climate models of long simulations.
This paper is outlined as follows. Section 2 describes the
data and method used in the study. Sections 3 and 4 discuss
PDO and AMV responses. Section 5 presents the conclusion
and discussion.
2. Data and method
2.1. Data
As benchmarks in the observation, PDO and AMV will
derived from the sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) of
Fig. 1. Observed spatial regression pattern, time series, and power spectra for PDO (a, c, e) and AMV (b, d, f) metrics (1870e2012).
the Hadley Centre Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperature
dataset (HadISST), which contains monthly mean values in
1870e2012 and has a horizontal spatial resolution of 1 1
(Fig. 1c and d). PDO and AMV patterns are derived as the
regression of PDO and AMV indices on the global SST
(Fig. 1a and b). Four coupled climate models will be used, all
of which are derived from the multimodel dataset of the world
climate research program's CMIP5 (http://www.ipcc-data.org/
sim/gcm_monthly/AR5/Reference-Archive.html) (Table 1).
These models are selected because they have the model output
of long global warming projection simulations. For each run,
we use pre-industrial (PI) run as the control and examine
changes in PDO and the AMV in the control and future pro-
jection simulation under the weak global warming scenario of
the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP2.6). This
scenario represents the future climate under weak global
warming with low emission of greenhouse gases (i.e., radiative
forcing at 2100 reach about 2.6 W m 2) and mean global
warming temperature of about 1.1e1.8  C (this condition is
comparable with the 1.5  C warming case). The SST field of
 WU S. et al. / Advances in Climate Change Research 9 (2018) 95e101 97

Table 1
CMIP5 models used in this study.
Climate model Institution Country Horizontal resolution Pre-industrial RCP 2.6
length (years) length (years)
bcc-csm1-1 Beijing Climate Center China 360  232 500 295
CCSM4 National Center for Atmospheric Research USA 320  384 500 295
IPSL-CM5A-LR Institut Pierre Simon Laplace France 182  149 1000 295
MPI-ESM-LR Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Germany 256  220 1000 295

the models is interpolated into the same grids (1 1 ) as
observation for ease of comparison. The density field of the
models is interpolated into the same grids (1 1 ) to calculate
the speed of Rossby wave.
2.2. Statistical techniques
We first derive the mean annual data from the monthly SST
data. We then high pass the interannual variability by applying
a three-year running mean twice (Zhang et al., 1997). The low
passed variability is then derived as the anomalous field minus
the annual climatological mean.
The PDO index is derived as the principle component of the
leading empirical orthogonal function (EOF) mode of the low-
passed SST variability over the North Pacific (110 E 100 W,
20 N 70 N), and EOF is normalized by its standard deviation
(Mantua et al., 1997). The AMV index is derived as the
average area of the low-passed SST anomaly over the North
Atlantic (80 W 0 , 0 70 N) (Enfield et al., 2001). These
two indices are then normalized (Fig. 1c and d), and the pat-
terns of PDO and AMV are obtained as the regression of the
annual mean SSTA on the PDO and AMV indices,
respectively (Fig. 1a and b). A spectral analysis is applied to
the PDO or AMV index (Fig. 1e and f), and the major period is
identified as the frequency of the peak power.
For the simulations of each model, we analyze two 200-
year periods (years 1e200, and 201e400) from the PI con-
trol run and one 200-year period (2101e2300) of the RCP2.6
run. Multimodel ensemble statistics are obtained for various
purposes. For the power spectra, we obtain the index from
each CMIP5 model and calculate the power spectra for each
index. We average the individual normalized power spectra
and produce ensemble mean power spectra. Our 200-year time
series is the same as that for the decadal variability of AMOC
in the study of Cheng et al. (2016) and is twice the length in
the PDO analysis of Wang and Li (2017).
3. Observation
We first show PDO and AMV in the observation as
benchmarks. PDO is defined as the first leading EOF mode of
the North Pacific SSTA (Fig. 1a). The spatial pattern of PDO
(regressing SSTA on the first PC time series) resembles an
ENSO-like pattern (Zhang et al., 1997; Mantua et al., 1997).

Fig. 2. Spatial patterns of PDO and AMV of the four CMIP5 models in PI and in RCP2.6.
98 WU S. et al. / Advances in Climate Change Research 9 (2018) 95e101

The positive phase of PDO has negative SSTA in the central
North Pacific and surrounded by positive anomalies along the
west coast of North America and toward the tropics. The
maximum regression amplitude is in the central North Pacific,
and the regression amplitude of tropics is around 0.75 of the
maximum (Fig. 1a). The PDO index and power spectra are
shown in Fig. 1c and e. The two peaks in the PDO power
spectra correspond to bidecadal and multidecadal, respec-
tively, and the major periods are the 20-year and 50-year
periods.
AMV is defined as the average of the North Atlantic SSTA.
The spatial pattern of AMV is characterized by a horseshoe
pattern (Fig. 1b) (Deser and Blackmon, 1993; Kushnir, 1994).
The AMV index and power spectra are shown in Fig. 1d and f.
The AMV phase changes on multidecadal timescales, and the
peak of the power spectra is around 70 years.
4. Response to weak global warming
Few studies have investigated the response of PDO to
future global warming by using climate models. However, the
data length has been limited to ~100 years, which is too short
to assess the response of decadal variability with high statis-
tical significance, especially for multi-decadal variability
(Fang et al., 2014; Wang and Li, 2017). Here, we choose four
CMIP5 coupled climate models, which have available model
outputs of long global warming simulations (Table 1). We
choose RCP2.6 simulations to represent the scenario of weak
global warming. Our analysis uses at least 200 years of data,
although this time period is still insufficiently long to achieve
high statistical significance, to represent a significant increase
in data length for decadal variability study in comparison with
previous works.
The model simulations reproduce the observed spatial
patterns of PDO and AMV reasonably well in both PI and
global warming cases (Fig. 2). The model PDO, however,
shows too weak amplitude in the tropics, reflecting the un-
derestimation of extratropicaletropical interaction in the
model (Newman, 2007). Several differences are noted among
the four models. The tropical regression coefficient is near to
zero in the bcc-csm1-1 model, and the three other models can
reproduce the tripole structure. Another deficiency is the

Fig. 3. Ensemble mean power spectrum and the major period (max in power spectrum) of PDO and AMV from the simulations of the PI and RCP2.6 in the four
CMIP5 models. The black and blue solid dots in (c) PDO and (d) AMV are the periods corresponding to the peaks of the power spectrum. Error bar are calculated
by single run.
 WU S. et al. / Advances in Climate Change Research 9 (2018) 95e101 99

location of the maximum of PDO, which lies in the central
North Pacific in the observation but in the Kuroshio Oyashio
Extension (KOE) region in the models.
The change in the dominant time scale of decadal vari-
ability is determined by comparing the power spectra between
the PI and RCP2.6 simulations. First, we study the response of
PDO. For each model, the power spectra of the PDO index are
calculated for two 200-year sections for the PI control run and
for a single 200-year section for the RCP2.6 run. The
ensemble mean for the PI and RCP2.6 are shown in Fig. 3a.
The visual comparison of the spectra between PI and RCP2.6
runs shows a tendency of peak power shift from low frequency
to high frequency. This change in frequency is evident in the
change in the major period, which is defined here as the period
for the peak power spectra. In the major period, the ensemble
mean power spectra decrease from ~85 years in PI to ~60
years in RCP2.6 (Fig. 3c). To assess the robustness of this
frequency shift, we calculate the spread of the major periods of
all single 200-year sections in PI and RCP2.6 (marked as a
vertical bar for PI and RCP2.6, respectively; Fig. 3c). The
spread of the major periods of PDO show some overlaps be-
tween PI and RCP2.6. Nevertheless, a clear evidence of period

Fig. 4. Distribution of the average of the North Pacific (a) and North Atlantic (b) SSTA standard deviation fields in observation, PI, and RCP2.6. The “tot” means
total standard deviation, “dec” means decadal standard deviation, and “ana” means interannual standard deviation. Boxplot boundaries are set at the 25th and 75th
percentiles (p25 and p75, respectively).
100 WU S. et al. / Advances in Climate Change Research 9 (2018) 95e101
reduction is obtained. The major period of 60 years in the
ensemble is at the lower margin of the ensemble spread of the
PI runs, and the major period of 85 years of the ensemble PI is
above the upper margin of spread of RCP2.6 (Fig. 3c). The
shortening of the PDO also occurs in the next four major
frequencies, which represent the frequencies of the second,
third, fourth, and fifth largest spectral peaks. The reduction of
the period from the PI to RCP2.6 run is true for all the cor-
responding periods on the next four frequencies. We calculate
the average period by using all the spectral peaks. The average
period also decreases under weak global warming.
The shortening of the AMV is a function of time scale and
is more significant than that of the PDO. The overall short-
ening can be seen by comparing the ensemble mean spectra
between the PI and RCP2.6 groups (Fig. 3b). The major period
of the ensemble mean spectra is reduced from ~80 years to
~25 years (Fig. 3d) and is beyond the ensemble spread. Similar
reduction is also seen in the next few frequencies. The
reduction of period of AMV is on the SST and surface climate.
This shortening of the AMV period is consistent with the
shortening of the major period of the decadal variability of the
AMV that has been discussed by Cheng et al. (2016). And the
average period is same as the major period. Therefore, our
study suggests that the shortening of decadal AMOC may have
its signature on the SST and in the surface climate field.
Therefore, both the PDO and AMV become shorter in
response to weak global warming, and the decrease is more
significant for the latter. This conclusion remains valid if we use
Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) method, which can
remove the trend caused by CO2 changes in the RCP2.6 runs.
Finally, we study the response of the intensity of the PDO
and AMV to global warming in terms of the SSTA standard
deviation of the North Pacific and the North Atlantic. To test
the significance of the results, we cut the long pre-industrial
runs (1e500 years) to 100 years (i.e., 1e100, 101e200,
201e300, 301e400, and 401e500). The RCP2.6 runs of
2101e2200, 2151e2251, and 2201e2300 are then selected to
study the change in the SST standard deviation of the North
Pacific and the North Atlantic. We calculate the total SSTA
and low-passed SSTA standard deviation as total standard
deviation and decadal standard deviation, and the residual is
the interannual standard deviation. The mean field is calcu-
lated for boxplot. Fig. 4 shows the standard deviations of the
PDO (a) and AMV (b) for total variability (left), decadal
variability (middle), and their difference (right), which
represent the intensities of total, decadal, and interannual
variabilities, respectively. In the North Pacific, the total vari-
ability and decadal variability are both reduced, as evident by
the reduction of the standard deviation of the total variability
(left column) from PI to RCP2.6. The total variability is also
compared with the observation, and the model shows a
stronger variability in the North Pacific but a comparable
magnitude of total variability with the observation in the North
Atlantic. For the Pacific (Fig. 4a), the variability is reduced for
the total variability and decadal variability but not interannual
variability. By contrast, in the Atlantic (Fig. 4b), the variance
is reduced in the total, decadal, and interannual variabilities.
Fig. 5. Rossby wave speed of the North Pacific (NP) and the North Atlantic
(NA) in PI and RCP2.6 in the four CMIP5 models. Circles and triangles show
the change of Rossby wave speed in the North Pacific under and North
Atlantic, respectively, under weak global warming.
Overall, the shortening and weakening of the PDO are
consistent with those reported in previous studies (Fang et al.,
2014). Our analysis shows that the weakening seems to be
detectable even under weak warming scenario. However, the
interannual variability remains largely unchanged in the Pa-
cific. This finding suggests that the reduction of PDO is un-
likely caused by the reduction of atmospheric random
variability, which exhibits a white spectra and therefore does
not seem to be reduced at the interannual time scale. The
speed up of Rossby waves caused by the enhanced stratifica-
tion may be responsible for the acceleration of the PDO and
could also be related to its weakening. The speed of Rossby
wave increases under weak global warming both in the North
Pacific and the North Atlantic in the four CMIP5 models
(Fig. 5). In the Atlantic, both the decadal variance and inter-
annual variance are reduced, suggesting that the weakening of
the AMV may be contributed by the reduction of atmospheric
random forcing, whose weakening leads the weakening at all
time scales. Several works support this result, which points out
that the atmosphere signal leads the observed AMV by about
15 years (Li et al., 2013; Sun et al., 2015). However, this
variability seems to be different from that of AMOC (Cheng
et al., 2016). As such, further studies are needed to under-
stand the relation between AMV change and surface climate
variability.
5. Conclusions and discussion
In this preliminary study, we discuss the response of two
dominant low-frequency modes in the ocean under weak
global warming by using four CMIP5 models. The major
conclusion is that even under the weak global warming case of
RCP2.6, both PDO and AMV show significant responses, that
is, shortening of time scale and weakening in amplitude. This
finding suggests that both modes might be very sensitive to
global warming. The shortening of time scale is especially
clear for the AMV. Further analysis of the variance in different
frequency bands shows that the Pacific variability is reduced
only in the decadal variability, not in interannual variability,
 WU S. et al. / Advances in Climate Change Research 9 (2018) 95e101
whereas the Atlantic SST variability is reduced in both
decadal and interannual bands. Hence, the PDO and AMV
show different response mechanisms. Further studies are
needed to understand the mechanism of climate response. A
comprehensive study of the response and mechanism of PDO
and AMV for all global warming scenarios must also be
conducted.
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the Chinese MOST
(2017YFA0603801) and NSFC (41630527).
References
Cheng, J., Liu, Z., Zhang, S., et al., 2016. Reduced interdecadal variability of
Atlantic meridional overturning circulation under global warming. Proc.
Natl. Acad. Sci. Unit. States Am. 113 (12), 3175e3178.
Delworth, T., Manabe, S., Stouffer, R., 1993. Interdecadal variations of the
thermohaline circulation in a coupled ocean-atmosphere model. J. Clim. 6
(11), 1993e2011.
Deser, C., Blackmon, M.L., 1993. Surface climate variations over the North
Atlantic ocean during winter: 1900e1989. J. Clim. 6 (9), 1743e1753.
Enfield, D.B., Mestas-Nu~nez, A.M., Trimble, P.J., 2001. The Atlantic multi-
decadal oscillation and its relation to rainfall and river flows in the con-
tinental U.S. Geophys. Res. Lett. 28 (10), 2077e2080.
England, M.H., McGregor, S., Spence, P., et al., 2014. Recent intensification of
wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus.
Nat. Clim. Change 4 (3), 222e227.
Fang, C., Wu, L., Zhang, X., 2014. The impact of global warming on the
Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the possible mechanism. Adv. Atmos. Sci.
31 (1), 118e130.
101
Hawkins, E., Sutton, R., 2009. The potential to narrow uncertainty in regional
climate predictions. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 90 (8), 1095e1107.
IPCC, 2013. Climate Change 2013: the Physical Science Basis. Working
Group Ⅰ Contribution to the Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and
New York.
Kosaka, Y., Xie, S.P., 2013. Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial
Pacific surface cooling. Nature 501 (7467), 403.
Kushnir, Y., 1994. Interdecadal variations in North Atlantic sea surface tem-
perature and associated atmospheric conditions. J. Clim. 7 (1), 141e157.
Li, J., Sun, C., Jin, F.F., 2013. NAO implicated as a predictor of Northern
Hemisphere mean temperature multidecadal variability. Geophys. Res.
Lett. 40 (20), 5497e5502.
Liu, Z., 2012. Dynamics of interdecadal climate variability: a historical
perspective. J. Clim. 25 (6), 1963e1995.
Mantua, N.J., Hare, S.R., Zhang, Y., et al., 1997. A Pacific interdecadal climate
oscillation with impacts on salmon production. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc.
78 (6), 1069e1079.
Newman, M., 2007. Interannual to decadal predictability of tropical and North
Pacific sea surface temperatures. J. Clim. 20 (11), 2333e2356.
Sun, C., Li, J., Jin, F.F., 2015. A delayed oscillator model for the quasi-
periodic multidecadal variability of the NAO. Clim. Dynam. 45 (7e8),
2083e2099.
Sun, C., Kucharski, F., Li, J., et al., 2017. Western tropical Pacific multi-
decadal variability forced by the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. Nat.
Commun. 8, 15998.
Wang, J., Li, C., 2017. Low-frequency variability and possible changes in the
North Pacific simulated by CMIP5 models. J. Meteorol. Soc. Jpn. Ser. II 95
(3), 199e211.
Zhang, Y., Wallace, J.M., Battisti, D.S., 1997. ENSO-like interdecadal vari-
ability: 1900e93. J. Clim. 10 (5), 1004e1020.
Zhang, R., Delworth, T.L., 2006. Impact of Atlantic multidecadal oscillations
on India/Sahel rainfall and Atlantic hurricanes. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33
(17).