Teleconnection Between Atlantic Multidecadal Variability and European Temperature: Diversity and Evaluation of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 Models

A realistic simulation of the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) and related teleconnections is essential to resolve and understand the potential predictability over Europe at decadal timescale. Based on a large ensemble of state-of-the-art climate models, we show that a considerable intermodel spread exists in the spatiotemporal properties of the simulated AMV and teleconnections with European summer temperature. The greater the persistence, variance, and basin-scale spatial coherence, the stronger the teleconnection. We demonstrate that only a few members of a few models produce a teleconnection that is consistent with observational estimates over the instrumental period. This highlights the possible extreme nature of the last century teleconnection and/or a detrimental underestimation of ocean-land teleconnectivity in many climate models. Yet we emphasize the considerable uncertainties due to methods used to disentangle internal and externally forced variations in observations, and to sampling, which must be correctly accounted when analyses are performed on short temporal records.