Reconciling observed and modeled temperature and precipitation trends over Europe by adjusting for circulation variability

Abstract

Europe experienced a pronounced winter cooling of about −0.37°C/decade in the period 1989–2012, in contrast to the strong warming simulated by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 multimodel average during the same period. Even more pronounced discrepancies between observed and simulated short-term trends are found at the local scale, e.g., a strong winter cooling over Switzerland and a pronounced reduction in precipitation along the coast of Norway. We show that monthly sea level pressure variability accounts for much of the short-term variations of temperature over most of the domain and of precipitation in certain regions. Removing the effect of atmospheric circulation through a regression approach reconciles the observed temperature trends over Europe and Switzerland and the precipitation trend along the coast of Norway with the corresponding multimodel mean trends.