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Updated: Mar 27, 2026

Using Generative Art to Convey Past and Future Climate Transitions
Published on: March 31, 2023
ENSO phase transition enables prediction of winter North Atlantic Oscillation one year ahead
Kiwook Kim1, Myong-In Lee2, Adam A Scaife3,4
1Department of Civil, Urban, Earth and Environmental Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, South Korea.
Abstract:
The winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a dominant mode of climate variability affecting temperature and precipitation across the Northern Hemisphere, yet its prediction at seasonal-to-decadal (S2D) lead times remains challenging. Here, using multi-year hindcasts from a multi-model ensemble initialized on 1 November for 1962-2019, we show that NAO skill one year ahead improves significantly when the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) undergoes a phase transition next year. This improvement is linked to the northward propagation of anomalous atmospheric angular momentum, which dynamically organizes the NAO and is captured in reanalysis and models. During ENSO transition years, prediction skill increases with ensemble size, and when more than 10 members are used, the forecasts display the signal-to-noise paradox. These findings highlight the potential for enhanced one-year NAO predictability when ENSO transitions are present and large ensemble sizes are used in S2D prediction systems, given the skillful prediction of ENSO phase transitions at one-year lead times by multi-model ensembles.
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