JAPAN - Atmospheric teleconnections linking Northern Europe and the Far East: their dynamics and evolution in a changing climate

Low-frequency atmospheric variability can couple distant regions of the earth through teleconnection patterns. These are important for seasonal forecasting, as slowly-varying patterns may be more amenable to predictions and nevertheless strongly influence day-to-day weather. There is recent evidence that inter-annual climate variations over the distant regions of the Far-East and the North Atlantic are coupled both in winter and summer, from large-scale wave trains propagating around the globe. The lon g-term variability and the evolution of these teleconnections in a changing, warming climate, are poorly known. The summer Europe-to-Far East northerly teleconnections are important for Arctic cyclone activity. As the Arctic warms and the sea-ice edge ret reats, it is important to assess circulation changes in the ?Blue Arctic?, nearly ice-free conditions, that might prevail at the end of the century. Both atmospheric and coupled ocean-atmosphere models, as well as comprehensive, meteorological dataset p lay a crucial role for understanding and prediction of such teleconnections. Multi-decadal simulations of the current climate and scenario simulations of the climate evolution throughout the 21st century, are being constantly improved in both Norway and J apan in the frame of national projects or international programmes, such as the International Panel on Climate Change. We would tap on existing but separate modelling efforts, and focus on new diagnostic use of model simulations and large data sets to exp lore the teleconnections between Europe and the Far East. Such phenomena have not been explored to any large extent in climate scenario simulations, which first tended to focus on global or regional warming estimations. We aim at writing a research propos al that can be submitted to the Norwegian Research Council in 2008.