Paper Reviewed
Kumar, A. and Wang, H. 2015. On the potential of extratropical SST anomalies for improving climate predictions. Climate Dynamics 44: 2557-2569.

Kumar and Wang (2015) begin their analysis of this intriguing but disturbing subject by reporting that "considerable efforts have been devoted to predicting the evolution of climate with a lead time of 1-30 years," while noting that these decadal predictions rely on our ability to predict "the low-frequency modes of coupled ocean-atmosphere variability," two examples of which are the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO), as discussed by Soloman et al. (2011) and Meehl et al. (2013).

In further exploring this situation, the two researchers report finding that (1) "of the analyses that do provide an assessment of skill over terrestrial regions -- Teng et al. (2011), van Oldenborgh et al. (2012), MacLeod et al. (2012), Kim et al. (2012), Muller et al. (2012), Goddard et al. (2013), Doblas-Reyes et al. (2013) -- the results have not been encouraging," that (2) "for ensemble mean prediction the observed associations between the sea surface temperature [SST] fingerprint of low-frequency modes of SST variability and the atmospheric and terrestrial variability are not replicated," citing Teng et al. (2011), van Oldenborgh et al. (2012) and Muller et al. (2012)," that (3) "a different set of observational studies analyzing the predictive value of SST associated with low-frequency modes such as the PDO done in forecast mode has not shown promising results," citing Davis (1976) and Guztler et al. (2002), and that (4) "inferences based on general circulation model simulations have also found little influence of extratropical SSTs in constraining atmospheric and terrestrial variability," citing Pierce (2002) and Kumar et al. (2013).

In concluding their analysis of the matter, Kumar and Wang thus state that their work provides explanations for (5) why "the skill of atmospheric and terrestrial quantities in initialized decadal predictions is not much better than their uninitialized counterpart," for (6) why "the observed teleconnection between SST and atmospheric and terrestrial quantities is not replicated in the ensemble of initialized decadal prediction runs," and (7) why "similar teleconnection relationships on a seasonal time scale have not translated to their application towards improving skill of seasonal predictions," all of which findings ultimately lead them to the conclusion that far into the future "the constraint of the coupled ocean-atmosphere variability will still be a basic limitation on prediction skill."

References
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Guztler, D.S., Kann, D.M. and Thornbrugh, C. 2002. Modulation of ENSO-based long-lead outlooks of southwestern U.S. Winter Precipitation by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Journal of Climate 17: 1163-1172.

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