Early warning signal for a tipping point suggested by a millennial Atlantic Multidecadal Variability reconstruction

Atlantic multidecadal variability is a coherent mode of natural climate variability occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean, with strong impacts on human societies and ecosystems worldwide. However, its periodicity and drivers are widely debated due to the short temporal extent of instrumental observa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2022-09, Vol.13 (1), p.5176-14, Article 5176
Main Authors: Michel, Simon L. L., Swingedouw, Didier, Ortega, Pablo, Gastineau, Guillaume, Mignot, Juliette, McCarthy, Gerard, Khodri, Myriam
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
704/106/413
704/106/694
Aerosols
Atlantic Ocean
Climate
Climate models
Climate variability
Ecosystem
General circulation models
Geophysics
Greenhouse gases
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Hypotheses
Marine ecosystems
multidisciplinary
Ocean circulation
Oceans and Seas
Paleoclimate
Paleoclimatology
Periodic variations
Periodicity
Physics
Reconstruction
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Simulation
Statistical analysis
Surface temperature
Temperature
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Summary:Atlantic multidecadal variability is a coherent mode of natural climate variability occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean, with strong impacts on human societies and ecosystems worldwide. However, its periodicity and drivers are widely debated due to the short temporal extent of instrumental observations and competing effects of both internal and external climate factors acting on North Atlantic surface temperature variability. Here, we use a paleoclimate database and an advanced statistical framework to generate, evaluate, and compare 312 reconstructions of the Atlantic multidecadal variability over the past millennium, based on different indices and regression methods. From this process, the best reconstruction is obtained with the random forest method, and its robustness is checked using climate model outputs and independent oceanic paleoclimate data. This reconstruction shows that memory in variations of Atlantic multidecadal variability have strongly increased recently—a potential early warning signal for the approach of a North Atlantic tipping point. This study presents a last millennium reconstruction of Atlantic Multidecadal Variability fluctuations. This sufficiently long and validated reconstruction suggests the potential approach of a tipping point in the North Atlantic current system.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-022-32704-3