The Dynamical Response to Snow Cover Perturbations in a Large Ensemble of Atmospheric GCM Integrations

Variability in the extent of fall season snow cover over the Eurasian sector has been linked in observations to a teleconnection with the winter northern annular mode pattern. Here, the dynamics of this teleconnection are investigated using a 100-member ensemble of transient integrations of the GFDL atmospheric general circulation model (AM2). The model is perturbed with a simple persisted snow anomaly over Siberia and is integrated from October through December. Strong surface cooling occurs above the anomalous Siberian snow cover, which produces a tropospheric form stress anomaly associated with the vertical propagation of wave activity. This wave activity response drives wave–mean flow interaction in the lower stratosphere and subsequent downward propagation of a negative-phase northern annular mode response back into the troposphere. A wintertime coupled stratosphere–troposphere response to fall season snow forcing is also found to occur even when the snow forcing itself does not persist into winter. Finally, the response to snow forcing is compared in versions of the same model with and without a well-resolved stratosphere. The version with the well-resolved stratosphere exhibits a faster and weaker response to snow forcing, and this difference is tied to the unrealistic representation of the unforced lower-stratospheric circulation in that model.