Revisiting the reanalysis-model discrepancy in Southern Hemisphere winter storm track trends

Here, we revisit this reanalysis-model trend discrepancy to better understand the mechanisms underlie it. A comprehensive like-for-like analysis shows reanalysis trends exhibit large uncertainty, and coupled climate model simulations exhibit weaker trends than most but not all reanalyses.

However, simulations with prescribed sea surface temperature (SST) exhibit significantly greater storminess trends, particularly in the South Pacific, implying SST trend discrepancies in coupled simulations impact storminess trends. Using pacemaker simulations that correct Southern Ocean and tropical east Pacific SST trend discrepancies, we show that storminess trends in coupled simulations are underestimated because they do not capture the enhanced storminess resulting from Southern Ocean cooling and La-Nina-like teleconnection trends.