A comparison between general circulation model simulations using two sea surface temperature datasets for January 1979

Simulations with the UCLA atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) using two different global sea surface temperature (SST) datasets for January 1979 are compared. One of these datasets is based on Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS) (SSTs) at locations where there are ship reports, and climatology elsewhere; the other is derived from measurements by instruments onboard NOAA satellites. In the former dataset (COADS SST), data are concentrated along shipping routes in the Northern Hemisphere; in the latter dataset High Resolution Infrared Sounder (HIRS SST), data cover the global domain. Ensembles of five 30-day mean fields are obtained from integrations performed in the perpetual-January mode. The results are presented as anomalies, that is, departures of each ensemble mean from that produced in a control simulation with climatological SSTs. Large differences are found between the anomalies obtained using COADS and HIRS SSTs, even in the Northern Hemisphere where the datasets are most similar to each other. The internal variability of the circulation in the control simulation and the simulated atmospheric response to anomalous forcings appear to be linked in that the pattern of geopotential height anomalies obtained using COADS SSTs resembles the first empirical orthogonal function (EOF 1) in the control simulation. The corresponding pattern obtained using HIRS SSTs is substantially different and somewhat resembles EOF 2 in the sector from central North America to central Asia. To gain insight into the reasons for these results, three additional simulations are carried out with SST anomalies confined to regions where COADS SSTs are substantially warmer than HIRS SSTs. The regions correspond to warm pools in the northwest and northeast Pacific, and the northwest Atlantic. These warm pools tend to produce positive geopotential height anomalies in the northeastern part of the corresponding oceans. Both warm pools in the Pacific produce large-scale circulation anomalies with a pattern that resembles that obtained using COADS SSTs as well as EOF 1 of the control simulation; the warm pool in the Atlantic does not. These results suggest that the differences obtained with COADS SSTs and HIRS SSTs are mostly due to the differences in the datasets over the northern Pacific. There was a blocking episode near Greenland in late January 1979. Both simulations with warm SST anomalies over the northwest and northeast Pacific show a tendency toward increased incidence of North Atlantic blocking; the simulation with warm SST anomalies over the northwest Atlantic shows a tendency toward decreased incidence. These results suggest that features in both SST datasets that do not have a counterpart in the other dataset contribute signficantly to the differences between the simulated and observed fields. The results of this study imply that uncertainties in current SST distributions for the world oceans can be as important as the SST anomalies themselves in terms of their impact on the atmospheric circulation. Caution should be exercised, therefore, when linking anomalous circulation and SST patterns, especially in long-range prediction.