Air-sea coupling enhances the East Asian winter climate response to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation

A simple air-sea coupled model, the atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction coupled to a mixed-layer slab ocean model, is employed to investigate the impact of air-sea coupling on the signals of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). A regional coupling strategy is applied, in which coupling is switched off in the extratropical North Atlantic Ocean but switched on in the open oceans elsewhere. The coupled model is forced with warm-phase AMO SST anomalies, and the modeled responses are compared with those from parallel uncoupled AGCM experiments with the same SST forcing. The results suggest that the regionally coupled responses not only resemble the AGCM simulation, but also have a stronger intensity. In comparison, the coupled responses bear greater similarity to the observational composite anomaly. Thus, air-sea coupling enhances the responses of the East Asian winter climate to the AMO. To determine the mechanism responsible for the coupling amplification, an additional set of AGCM experiments, forced with the AMO-induced tropical SST anomalies, is conducted. The SST anomalies are extracted from the simulated AMO-induced SST response in the regionally coupled model. The results suggest that the SST anomalies contribute to the coupling amplification. Thus, tropical air-sea coupling feedback tends to enhance the responses of the East Asian winter climate to the AMO.