Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector

The fluctuating climate of the North Atlantic has profound consequences, inducing changes in hurricane activity, surface temperatures and rainfall from North America to Europe and Africa. In principle, these changes could be predicted if the current state of the ocean were known, but the necessary subsurface observations are lacking. Keenlyside et al. now show that detailed knowledge of the ocean state is not strictly necessary for producing useful predictions on decadal timescales. Their approach, which has proved its worth in 'retro-spective' forecasts, uses existing sea surface temperature observations to improve the forecasting power of climate models. The new model predicts that over the next decade, natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific oceans will temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming: surface temperatures in Europe and North America may even cool a little during this period.