Project Description:
Changes in climate variability are as important for society to address as are changes in mean climate. This project would look at how climate variability (such as El Nino) depends on the climate itself. It will use the suite of past climate model simulations that were run for the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report. This dataset has already been collated by UCL and the response of El Nino across the various simulations has been analysed by us (Brown et al., 2020).
Observations shows a strong reduction in variability since the last glacial (Rehfeld et al, 2018), and a reduction in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation in the past 200 (Thornalley et al, 2018). How does this compare to the behvaiour of state of the art Earth System Models? Their future scenarios will provide insight into how variability change over the coming century. You would push this work forward, complement ing the research of Brown et al. (2020) by looking at other forms of climate variability – with a particular focus on multi-decadal variability which is known to be undersimulated by climate models.
Policy Impact of Research:
Understanding the response of climate variability in future is essential when desiging adaptation responses.
