Dr. Sebastian Milinski
Max Planck Institut für Meteorologie
Title: "Internal variability in a changing climate — a large ensemble perspective on tropical Atlantic rainfall"
Abstract: A widely used assumption in climate science is that internal variability does not change over time, but does this assumption hold in a warming world? In this presentation I will introduce a new analysis framework to detect changes in internal variability using an initial-condition large ensemble. I will then apply this framework to investigate past and future rainfall changes over the tropical Atlantic and Sahel regions and show that rainfall variability does change in response to global warming, leading to changes in the magnitude of anomalous and extreme rainfall events.
Finally, I will demonstrate how initial-condition large ensembles offer new possibilites for a robust comparison of simulated and observed internal variability and forced trends.