The Role of the North Atlantic Oscillation for Projections of Winter Mean Precipitation in Europe

Abstract

Climate models generally project an increase in the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index under a future high-emissions scenario, alongside an increase in winter precipitation in northern Europe and a decrease in southern Europe. The extent to which future forced NAO trends are important for European winter precipitation trends and their uncertainty remains unclear. We show using the Multimodel Large Ensemble Archive that the NAO plays a small role in northern European mean winter precipitation projections for 2080–2099. Conversely, half of the model uncertainty in southern European mean winter precipitation projections is potentially reducible through improved understanding of the NAO projections. Extreme positive NAO winters increase in frequency in most models as a consequence of mean NAO changes. These extremes also have more severe future precipitation impacts, largely because of mean precipitation changes. This has implications for future resilience to extreme positive NAO winters, which frequently have severe societal impacts.