The Winter North Pacific Teleconnection in Response to ENSO and the MJO in Operational Subseasonal Forecasting Models Is Too Weak

Chaim I. Garfinkel*, Wen Chen, Yanjie Li, Chen Schwartz, Priyanka Yadav, Daniela Domeisen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Teleconnection patterns associated with the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) impact weather and climate phenomena in the Pacific-North American region and beyond, and therefore accurately simulating these teleconnections is of importance for seasonal and subseasonal forecasts. Systematic biases in boreal midwinter ENSO and MJO teleconnections are found in eight subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) forecast models over the Pacific-North America region. All models simulate an anomalous 500-hPa geopotential height response that is too weak. This overly weak response is associated with overly weak subtropical upper-level convergence and a too-weak Rossby wave source in most models, and in several models there is also a biased subtropical Pacific jet, which affects the propagation of Rossby waves. In addition to this overly weak response, all models also simulate ENSO teleconnections that reach too far poleward toward Alaska and northeastern Russia. The net effect is that these models likely underestimate the impacts associated with the MJO and ENSO over western North America, and suffer from a reduction in skill from what could be achieved.

Original languageAmerican English
Pages (from-to)4413-4430
Number of pages18
JournalJournal of Climate
Volume35
Issue number24
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 Dec 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledgments. CIG and WC are supported by the ISF-NSFC joint research program (ISF Grant 3259/19 and National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant 41961144025). YJL was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant 42175080. Support from the Swiss National Science Foundation through project PP00P2_198896 to PY and DD is gratefully acknowledged. S2S is a joint initiative of the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). Correspondence should be addressed to CIG (email: chaim.garfinkel@mail.huji.ac.il). We thank the reviewers for their helpful comments.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Meteorological Society.

Keywords

  • El Niño
  • Madden-Julian oscillation
  • Teleconnections

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