Effect of atmospheric circulation on recent temperature changes in Finland

Abstract

The effect of atmospheric circulation on temperature variability and trends in Finland in 1979–2018 is studied using a trajectory-based method. On the average 81% of the detrended interannual variance of monthly mean temperatures is explained by the start points of the three-dimensional trajectories, with the best performance in autumn and winter. Atmospheric circulation change is only found to have had a small impact on the observed annual mean temperature trends, but it has considerably modified the trends in individual months. In particular, changes in circulation explain the lack of observed warming in June, the very modest warming in October in southern Finland, and about a half of the very large warming in December. The residual trends obtained by subtracting the circulation-related change from observations are robustly positive in all months of the year, exhibit a smoother seasonal cycle, and agree better with the multi-model mean temperature trends from models in the 5th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Nevertheless, some differences between the residual trends and the average CMIP5 trends are also found.