Winter Euro-Atlantic Climate Modes: Future Scenarios From a CMIP6 Multi-Model Ensemble

Dominant Euro-Atlantic modes of large-scale atmospheric variability significantly affect interannual-to-decadal Euro-Mediterranean climate fluctuations, especially in winter. Here, we investigate the robustness of historical and projected state and variability of such modes in a CMIP6 multi-model ensemble of historical and ssp585 future scenario simulations, focusing on the winter season. Results show overall good skills of the historical ensemble to reproduce the observed temporal, spectral and distributional properties of all considered modes. At the end of the 21st Century the ssp585 ensemble yields non-significant distributional changes for NAO, EAWR, and SCA indices and a transition to a baroclinic structure for EA, with persistent positive anomalies in the mid-troposphere enhancing globally-driven warming over the Euro-Mediterranean region. The hemispheric spatial correlation patterns with temperature and precipitation significantly change for all modes, that is, we observe a significant modulation of the teleconnections associated with each index.