Earth's climate exhibits internal modes of variability on various timescales. Here we investigate multi-decadal variability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), Northern Hemisphere sea-ice extent and global mean temperature (GMT) in an ensemble of CMIP5 models under control conditions. We report an inter-annual GMT variability of about ±0.1 C originating solely from natural variability in the model ensemble. By decomposing the GMT variance into contributions of the AMOC and Northern Hemisphere sea-ice extent using a graph-theoretical statistical approach, we find the AMOC to contribute 8% to GMT variability in the ensemble mean. Our results highlight the importance of AMOC sea-ice feedbacks that explain 5% of the GMT variance, while the contribution solely related to the A. © 2014 Author(s).
CITATION STYLE
Schleussner, C. F., Runge, J., Lehmann, J., & Levermann, A. (2014). The role of the North Atlantic overturning and deep ocean for multi-decadal global-mean-temperature variability. Earth System Dynamics, 5(1), 103–115. https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-5-103-2014
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