Climate evolution in the last five centuries simulated by an atmosphere- ocean model: global temperatures, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Late M aunder Minimum.

Eduardo Zorita, Hans von Storch,Fidel González-Rouco,Ulrich Cubasch,Jürg Luterbacher,Stephanie Legutke, Irene Fischer-Bruns and Ulrich Schlese

Institute of Coastal Research, GKSS Research Centre, Geesthacht, Germany

Departmento of Astrofísica y Física de la Atmósfera, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain

Institute of Metereology, University of Berlin, Germany

Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Switzerland

Max-Planck-Institut of Metereology, Hamburg, Germany

ABSTRACT

The main results of a transient climate simulation of the last 500 years with a coupled atmosphere-ocean model driven by estimated solar variability, volcanic activity and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are presented and compared with several empirical climate reconstructions. Along the last five centuries the climate model simulates a climate colder than mean 20th century conditions almost globally, and the degree of cooling is clearly larger than in most empirical reconstructions of global and North hemispheric near-surface air temperature (Mann et al, 1998; Jones et al, 1998). The simulated temperatures tend to agree more closely with the reconstruction of Esper et al (2002) based on extratropical tree-ring chronologies. The model simulates two clear minima of the global mean temperature around 1700 A.D. (the Late Maunder Minimum) and around 1820 A.D. (the Dalton Minimum). The temperature trends simulated after the recovery from these minima are as large as the observed warming in the 20th century.

Full text- pdf format