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;ma=86400 Evolution of the Southern Annular Mode during the past millennium | Nature Climate Change
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Evolution of the Southern Annular Mode during the past millennium

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 564–569 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is the primary pattern of climate variability in the Southern Hemisphere1,2, influencing latitudinal rainfall distribution and temperatures from the subtropics to Antarctica. The positive summer trend in the SAM over recent decades is widely attributed to stratospheric ozone depletion2; however, the brevity of observational records from Antarctica1—one of the core zones that defines SAM variability—limits our understanding of long-term SAM behaviour. Here we reconstruct annual mean changes in the SAM since AD 1000 using, for the first time, proxy records that encompass the full mid-latitude to polar domain across the Drake Passage sector. We find that the SAM has undergone a progressive shift towards its positive phase since the fifteenth century, causing cooling of the main Antarctic continent at the same time that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed. The positive trend in the SAM since ∼AD 1940 is reproduced by multimodel climate simulations forced with rising greenhouse gas levels and later ozone depletion, and the long-term average SAM index is now at its highest level for at least the past 1,000 years. Reconstructed SAM trends before the twentieth century are more prominent than those in radiative-forcing climate experiments and may be associated with a teleconnected response to tropical Pacific climate. Our findings imply that predictions of further greenhouse-driven increases in the SAM over the coming century3 also need to account for the possibility of opposing effects from tropical Pacific climate changes.

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Figure 1: Regional temperature histories.
Figure 2: SAM reconstruction.
Figure 3: SAM data–model comparison.
Figure 4: ENSO teleconnections.

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Acknowledgements

N.J.A. is supported by a Queen Elizabeth II fellowship awarded by the Australian Research Council (ARC DP110101161). This study contributes to ARC Discovery Project DP140102059 awarded to N.J.A. and R.M. and is part of the British Antarctic Survey’s Polar Science for Planet Earth programme financially supported by the Natural Environment Research Council. Modelling work using CSIRO Mk3L was supported by an award to S.J.P. of computational resources on the NCI National Facility through the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme. M.H.E. is supported by ARC Laureate Fellowship FL100100214. We thank E. Wolff for discussions that improved the paper and we gratefully acknowledge the efforts of the PAGES2k and CMIP5/PMIP3 communities in archiving the proxy synthesis and model products that were used in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, Cambridge CB3 0ET, United Kingdom

    Nerilie J. Abram, Robert Mulvaney & John Turner

  2. Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia

    Nerilie J. Abram

  3. Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Laboratoire HydroSciences Montpellier et Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environment, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Françoise Vimeux

  4. Climate Change Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia

    Steven J. Phipps & Matthew H. England

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  1. Nerilie J. Abram
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Contributions

N.J.A. conceived the study and carried out the data analysis, with support from the other authors. All authors contributed to the discussion of ideas and writing of the paper.

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Correspondence to Nerilie J. Abram.

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Abram, N., Mulvaney, R., Vimeux, F. et al. Evolution of the Southern Annular Mode during the past millennium. Nature Clim Change 4, 564–569 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2235

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