ENSO and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation: a dynamical framework to understand present and future climate

Climate change predictions from large-scale coupled ocean-land-atmosphere models (e.g. IPCC) are potentially useful to predict changes in the climate statistics of ENSO and of decadal modes of Pacific variability as global warming progresses. However, it still unclear if these models adequately represent the fundamental dynamics controlling these modes of variability and their future changes. This talk presents an improved dynamical framework of Pacific Climate Variability that allows us to test and diagnose the coupled dynamics of ENSO and Decadal Variability. Such a framework is based on the recently discovered link between ENSO and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO), a mode of decadal climate variability that appears to intensity under global warming. Using this dynamical framework it is possible to test the degree of realism of the coupled climate models during the modern period and of their climate predictions.