Exploring the Tropical Pacific Manifold in Models and Observations

Abstract

The threat of global warming and the demand for reliable climate predictions pose a formidable challenge because the climate system is multiscale, high-dimensional and nonlinear. Spatiotemporal recurrences of the system hint to the presence of a low-dimensional manifold containing the high-dimensional climate trajectory that could make the problem more tractable. Here we argue that reproducing the geometrical and topological properties of the low-dimensional attractor should be a key target for models used in climate projections. In doing so, we propose a general data-driven framework to characterize the climate attractor and showcase it in the tropical Pacific Ocean using a reanalysis as observational proxy and two state-of-the-art models. The analysis spans four variables simultaneously over the periods 1979–2019 and 2060–2100. At each time t, the system can be uniquely described by a state space vector parametrized by N variables and their spatial variability. The dynamics is confined on a manifold with dimension lower than the full state space that we characterize through manifold learning algorithms, both linear and nonlinear. Nonlinear algorithms describe the attractor through fewer components than linear ones by considering its curved geometry, allowing for visualizing the high-dimensional dynamics through low-dimensional projections. The local geometry and local stability of the high-dimensional, multivariable climate attractor are quantified through the local dimension and persistence metrics. Model biases that hamper climate predictability are identified and found to be similar in the multivariate attractor of the two models during the historical period while diverging under the warming scenario considered. Finally, the relationships between different subspaces (univariate fields), and therefore among climate variables, are evaluated. The proposed framework provides a comprehensive, physically based, test for assessing climate feedbacks and opens new avenues for improving their model representation.