Impacts of Atlantic Multidecadal Variability on the Tropical Pacific: a multi-model study

Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) has been linked to the observed slowdown of global warming over 19982012 through its impact on the tropical Pacic. Given the global importance of tropical Pacic variability, better understanding this AtlanticPacic teleconnection is key for improving climate predictions, but the robustness and strength of this link are uncertain. Analyzing a multi-model set of sensitivity experiments, we nd that models differ by a factor of 10 in simulating the amplitude of the Equatorial Pacic cooling response to observed AMV warming. The inter-model spread is mainly driven by different amounts of moist static energy injection from the tropical Atlantic surface into the upper troposphere. We reduce this inter-model uncertainty by analytically correcting models for their mean precipitation biases and we quantify that, following an observed 0.26 C AMV warming, the equatorial Pacic cools by 0.11 C with an inter-model standard deviation of 0.03 C.