The Link between Gulf Stream Precipitation and European Blocking in General Circulation Models and the Role of Horizontal Resolution

TL;DR

This study shows that increasing atmospheric horizontal resolution in coupled models enhances Gulf Stream precipitation variability and reduces biases in European blocking and jet variability, with atmospheric resolution playing a key role over ocean resolution.

Contribution

It demonstrates the importance of atmospheric resolution in coupled models for accurately simulating Gulf Stream precipitation and European blocking, challenging the focus on ocean resolution alone.

Findings

Gulf Stream precipitation variability is linked to European blocking frequency.

Higher atmospheric resolution reduces biases in blocking and jet variability.

North Atlantic SST biases are weakly related to blocking and jet biases.

Abstract

Past studies show that coupled model biases in European blocking and North Atlantic eddy-driven jet variability decrease as one increases the horizontal resolution in the atmospheric and oceanic model components. This has commonly been argued to be related to an alleviation of sea surface temperature (SST) biases due to increased oceanic resolution in particular, with a physical pathway via changes to surface baroclinicity. On the other hand, many studies have now highlighted the key role of diabatic processes in the Gulf Stream region on blocking formation and maintenance. Here, following recent work by Schemm, we leverage a large multi-model ensemble to show that Gulf Stream precipitation variability in coupled models is tightly linked to the simulated frequency of European blocking and northern jet excursions. Furthermore, the reduced biases in blocking and jet variability are consistent with greater precipitation variability as a result of increased atmospheric horizontal resolution. By contrast, typical North Atlantic SST biases are found to share only a weak or negligible relationship with blocking and jet biases. Finally, while previous studies have used a comparison between coupled models and models run with prescribed SSTs to argue for the role of ocean resolution, we emphasise here that models run with prescribed SSTs experience greatly reduced precipitation variability due to their excessive thermal damping, making it unclear if such a comparison is meaningful. Instead, we speculate that most of the reduction in coupled model biases may actually be due to increased atmospheric resolution.