Extremely warm European summers are preceded by North Atlantic Ocean heat accumulation

In a new study, Lara Wallberg, together with Laura Suarez-Gutierrez, Daniela Matei, and Wolfgang Müller have investigated the relationship between extremely warm European summers and changes in the North Atlantic Ocean. They found a mechanism through which extremely warm European summers are preceded by the accumulation of heat in the North Atlantic Ocean on sub-decadal time scales of five to ten years. Thereby, anomalies of the ocean heat transport and associated ocean heat content changes result in ocean–atmosphere heat flux anomalies leading to extremely warm European summers several years later.