In this talk I will highlight recent progress on understanding the coupling of sea surface temperature patterns, atmospheric circulation, clouds, and radiation: a coupling that has come to be known as “the pattern effect”. This new understanding has large implications for both attributing recent global warming trends as well as project future ones.

For example, we now know that the observed spatial pattern of temperature change over 1981 to 2014 has led to a temporary slowdown of global average warming over this period – a slowdown that climate models fail to replicate due to systematic biases in their simulations of regional temperature trends in the Pacific. In the absence of reliable model simulations and an observational record that is too short relative to the timescales of the relevant physical processes, we need to turn to the paleoclimate record. I will discuss recent results using information from the Last Glacial Maximum to constrain climate sensitivity in the presence of a pattern effect, as well as prospects and challenges in using proxy data from the Holocene.

Please let Mary Rose or Prof. Simons know if you'd like the opportunity to speak with Cristi during the day on Friday, or join for lunch after the seminar, and we will arrange it.