English Abstract Patterns of temperature variability on interdecadal and
longer timescales are derived from empirical and simulated data for the
region centered around the North Atlantic ocean. The empirical dataset
consists of long early-instrumental records and high-quality proxy data.
The simulated data is obtained from a long integration of the coupled
intermediate-complexity model ECBilt. A combination of classical
statistical tools and modern spectral methods is used in the analysis. Both
in the empirical and simulated data, temperature variability is found to be
season dependent. In the empirial data, two distinct statistically
significant spatio-temporal modes of temperature variability are identified
on timescales longer than 50 years. The simulated data do not exhibit any
dominant timescale of variability in the considered range, which might be
due to the absence of external periodic forcing in the model experiment. In
summer, there is a promising similarity between empirical and simulated
patterns of temperature variability.
