STATISTICAL-ANALYSIS OF TROPICAL CLIMATE ANOMALY SIMULATIONS

The statistical analysis of two atmospheric general circulation simulations using the ECHAM3 GCM in permanent January conditions are presented. The two simulations utilize different oceanic surface temperatures in the Atlantic as boundary conditions: the cold simulation has SST representing the anomalous cold conditions during the decade 1904-13 while the warn simulation has SST representative for the decade 1951-60 where anomalous warm conditions have been observed. The analysis concentrates on the simulated differences between both experiments within the tropical belt to test the working hypothesis whether changes in the deep tropical heating initiated by the anomalous SST are responsible for the anomalies in the flow and mass field. We present a method which extracts the significant and dynamically consistent signal of the total difference using a multivariate statistical test based on the amplitudes of an a-priori specified mode expansion. These expansion modes are defined from a variant of the Matsuno-Gill linearized reduced gravity model for the tropical atmosphere. The application of the method shows a clear and well defined tropical signal in the flow and mass field which can be understood as the reponse of the ECHAM3 model to a deep heating anomaly not in the vicinity of the anomalous SST but on the neighboring continents especially South America and with opposite sign in remote areas between Indonesia and the dateline. The signal can be summarized as an enhancement of the GCM's tropical East-West circulation with the ascending branch over South America in the warm simulation compared to the cold run.