INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) Published online 3 August 2006 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.

com) DOI: 10.1002/joc.1379

Climatic outliers
B. G. Hunt*
CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, PMB1, Aspendale VIC 3195, Australia

Abstract:
A 10 000-year simulation for present climate has been generated with the CSIRO Mark 2 coupled climatic model. In this paper the model output has been analysed to produce a climatology of climatic outliers and to assess the role of such outliers in climatic variability. An assessment of the frequency of occurrence of outliers, compared with the statistical expectation from a Gaussian distribution, indicates that over most of the globe the surface temperature conforms to this distribution, but this is not the case for rainfall. Among the issues considered are the spatial occurrence rates over the globe of normalised climatic anomalies of various magnitudes, the temporal variability of outliers, the seasonal variability for a given outlier year, the spatial characteristics of outliers and the question of precursors to outliers. The relationship of outliers to the El Ni o/Southern Oscillation, the Pacic Decadal Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation is also n considered. A case study examining the relative severities of an outlier drought to a severe drought is also undertaken. Finally, the role of outliers and the greenhouse effect is considered. It is concluded that outliers are a manifestation of stochastic forcing. Copyright 2006 Royal Meteorological Society
KEY WORDS

simulation; coupled model; multi-millenial analysis; climatic outliers

Received 3 August 2005; Revised 22 May 2006; Accepted 29 May 2006

1. INTRODUCTION Climatic outliers are the most extreme anomalies occurring within a time series for any given climatic variable. As such they are of particular interest in view of their potential calamitous impacts. A pertinent example is the extremely hot summer of 2003 in Europe, to which some tens of thousands of deaths have been attributed (Schar et al., 2004). This extreme event is now raising the question whether there was a greenhouse contribution to this warming (Stott et al., 2004). An alternative view is whether this was just a climatic extreme generated exclusively by naturally occurring climatic variability (see Burt, 2004). A further example of outliers is the devastating droughts in the USA discussed by Fye et al. (2003). Documentation of climatic outliers using the observational record is essentially circumscribed by the brevity of this record. Proxy climatic records (Stahle et al., 2000; Jones and Mann, 2004; Briffa et al., 2004; among many others) provide valuable datasets, but these are limited both in their spatial coverage and temporal extent. Consequently, at the current time there is a dearth of knowledge surrounding the climatology of outliers. With the advent of multi-millennial runs with coupled climatic models (Osborn et al., 1999; Stouffer et al., 2000; Hunt and Elliott, 2002), it is now possible to use the resultant model outputs to investigate climatic
* Correspondence to: B. G. Hunt, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, PMB1, Aspendale VIC 3195, Australia. E-mail: barrie.hunt@csiro.au

outliers. For purposes of the present analysis outliers are dened here to be intense and brief anomalies: thus their magnitudes should be either > +3 standard deviations (SD) or < 3 SD, with a duration of the order of one year. Among the questions of interest are: what is the global pattern of outliers (dened by specied ranges of normalised climatic outliers)? What is the frequency of occurrence of outliers, and are there quantiable return periods? What is the spatial scale of an outlier? Do outliers occur as isolated events or part of well-dened temporal sequences? Is an outlier active for a whole year or only isolated months within a year? Critically, are there any identiable precursors to an outlier? A central issue, which is essentially undened, is what is the magnitude of the maximum outlier that can be expected at any one point? Our assessment of the magnitude of climatic outliers is greatly inuenced by recent events. For example, the US dustbowl droughts of the 1930s and the later droughts of the 1950s (see Fye et al. (2003)) might be viewed as the typical extreme of future droughts to be expected in the USA. However, Cook et al. (2004) have shown that these droughts were modest compared to those that occurred between 900 and 1300 A.D. The possibility exists that a drought of the magnitude of these earlier droughts could occur again given the lack of knowledge concerning the climatology of outliers. The present paper documents the climatology of a number of characteristics of climatic outliers, as generated in a 10 000-year simulation with the CSIRO Mark 2 coupled climatic model. The aim is to answer, where

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possible, the questions raised above, and to provide some insight into the properties of outliers, always remembering that only a simulation is involved. Attention will be focussed on surface temperature and rainfall as the two principal climatic variables of interest, although the procedures used here can be readily applied to any variable. Owing to the relatively coarse resolution of the CSIRO Mark 2 model, outliers associated with some specic climatic events cannot be replicated. These include extreme surface winds generated by hurricanes and tornadoes, intense rainfall produced by thunderstorms, etc. These are sub-grid scale features of the model. Thus, the outliers to be discussed are relatively large-scale phenomena that impact substantially sized communities. In addition to the temperature and rainfall, outliers associated with El Ni o/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) n events, the Pacic Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) will also be investigated to assess their potential association with outliers in general. Most results for temperature and rainfall will be presented as normalised annual mean anomalies, i.e. anomalies as departures from the 10 000-year mean divided by the 10 000-year SD.

2. MODEL DESCRIPTION The CSIRO Mark 2 coupled global climatic model was used for the simulation. The model has been described in detail by Gordon and OFarrell (1997). The model has an R21 horizontal spectral resolution (5.625 longitude by 3.25 latitude) giving 3584 gridboxes per vertical level. The atmospheric and oceanic components of the model had 9 and 21 vertical levels, respectively. These components are ux-corrected to prevent climatic drift with the corrections varying monthly, but being invariant from year to year they do not inuence interannual variability. The model has dynamical sea-ice and a static biosphere, with a number of different soil and plant types. Diurnal and seasonal variability are included in the model and the usual range of sub-grid parameterisations (see Gordon and OFarrell, 1997 for more details). The present simulation was commenced from a previous 1000-year simulation, hence initial model conditions were fully developed. Model outputs were stored at monthly intervals, as means or accumulations, for a wide range of atmospheric, sea-ice and oceanic variables. The model did not experience any climatic drift during the 10 000-year run; annual mean, globally averaged individual climatic variables were time-invariant to within 12% (see Hunt (2004) for an analysis of this aspect of the simulation).

3. SURFACE TEMPERATURE In Figure 1, global distributions of the frequency of occurrence, over all 10 000 years of the simulation, are
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presented for normalised annual mean surface temperature anomalies for values greater than 3 SD, 4 SD and 5 SD. Normalised temperature anomalies of magnitude 3 SD occur over most of the globe in Figure 1, with large regions having ten or more occurrences over the ten millennia. If any point had consecutive years with anomalies of the set magnitude, each year would have been counted individually. Given the low occurrence rates in Figure 1, and the temporal distributions shown below, such consecutive counts would have been extremely rare. Lowest occurrence rates tend to be over land areas and the Pacic Ocean, where an ENSO-like pattern can be discerned. The North Polar region has markedly different responses for positive and negative temperature anomalies. As might be expected, negative anomalies have low occurrence rates of these magnitudes over the cold seaice, whereas positive anomalies occur quite frequently. In the Southern Hemisphere the opposite response occurs, presumably owing to uctuations in the extent of the sea-ice. The global distributions for 4 SD and 5 SD in Figure 1 reveal a sharp drop in occurrence rates, with the majority of the globe not even experiencing anomalies with a magnitude of 4 SD. Most gridboxes were restricted to one or two occurrences over the ten millennia, highlighting the rarity of these events. It appears from Figure 1 that most outliers will be in the range of 34 SD, perhaps, a surprisingly low value. Gridboxes experiencing anomalies of 4 SD and 5 SD are mainly restricted to the oceans. The remarkable reduction in the occurrence rate of anomalies between 3 SD and 4 SD in Figure 1 (a similar outcome exists for rainfall, see below) is of interest, given the three-sigma fallacy discussed by Gumbel (1954). The latter is concerned with the view That about three times the standard deviation should be considered as the maximum for any statistical variate, for any number of observations. While Gumbel discusses this statement, the results in Figure 1 suggest that it is not entirely irrelevant for climatic variables, especially in view of the size of the dataset used here. It is of interest to compare the values in Figure 1 with expected outcomes associated with a Gaussian or normal distribution. For 3 SD there is an expectation over the 10 000 years of the simulation for 27 events, and a range of 1242 events at the 95% condence level. The majority of the gridboxes in the 3 SD panels of Figure 1 meet this expectation. Most of the gridboxes exceeding this upper range are associated with sea-ice, where the melting of the sea-ice can cause marked increases in surface temperature, and hence departure from Gaussian conditions. In the case of the lower range, these regions were primarily associated with very low SD, 0.2, indicating very constant conditions unrepresentative of a Gaussian distribution. Most of these regions are in the tropics and are spatially extensive, as can be seen from the related areas in Figure 1.
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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Figure 1. Global distributions of the frequency of occurrence over 10 000 years of normalised annual mean surface temperature anomalies. The left hand and right hand panels are for negative and positive anomalies, respectively. The upper, middle and lower panels are for normalised anomalies greater than 3 SD, 4 SD and 5 SD, respectively. The colour bars below the panels give the occurrence rates per 10 000 years.

For normalised SD of 4 and 5 in Figure 1, there is essentially a zero expectation of occurrence for a Gaussian distribution, even over 10 000 years. The simulated climate clearly meets this requirement over most of the globe, although there are noticeable exceptions for 4 SD. This situation was examined for the region of the South Atlantic Ocean in Figure 1, where an occurrence rate of about four events is shown for the 4 SD panel. A pdf was made of the normalised SD for a gridbox in this region. This proved to be quite Gaussian in its characteristics, but with a very low frequency of occurrence negative tail extending to just over 5 SD. This was found to be primarily associated with a period of four successive years in the rst 40 years of the simulation, and appears to be anomalous as regards the remainder of the run.
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Thus a Gaussian distribution provides a surprisingly adequate representation of the occurrence rate for temperature outliers over most of the globe. Exceptions are associated with specic climatic features discussed above. The relatively high occurrence rates for surface temperature anomalies of 3 SD over portions of the land area in Figure 1 have some implications regarding the greenhouse effect. These results indicate that naturally occurring climatic variability is capable of producing substantial positive temperature anomalies, albeit over limited areas at any one time (see below), that could be mistakenly attributed to greenhouse warming. On the other hand, the occurrence of negative temperature anomalies shows that the climatic system can also produce substantial cold spells, which could equally be used to discount
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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Figure 2. Time series plots of normalised annual mean surface temperature anomalies for model gridboxes in USA (40 N, 100 W) and ASIA (40 N, 110 E). For USA only values greater than 3 SD are shown, while for ASIA only values less than 3 SD are shown..

any greenhouse warming. This is an issue discussed in more detail in Hunt and Elliott (2004). For selected model gridboxes, time series of normalised anomalies were plotted for extreme events and outliers (Figure 2). Values are shown only for anomalies above 3 SD to reduce the clutter in the gure. Even with this cutoff there were still numerous events, approximately 40 over the 10 millennia at each of the points in Figure 2, which noticeably exceed the central expectation for a Gaussian distribution. Periods of some centuries existed without any anomalies attaining the set criteria, although many values below this limit did occur. In general, the occurrence rates in Figure 2 appear to be random. At other gridboxes (not shown) there was even more variability. For example, a point in Central Asia had a four millennia interval between occurrences of anomalies of 3 SD, and subsequently there was about one occurrence per millennium. In contrast, a point in Mozambique had several occurrences per millennium with anomalies above 4 SD. Similar variability was obtained for negative surface temperature anomalies. Figure 2 also highlights the problem of dening an outlier. For example, around year 2000 in the ASIA panel, temperature anomalies exceeding 3 SD occurred with relatively high frequency: thus while such events
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were exceptional in magnitude they were not uncommon. In contrast, over the next 3000 years only ten such events were identied, justifying their description as outliers. Clearly, the denition of an outlier can depend on which millennium is being considered. If only results for the 6th or 9th millennia in this panel were available, then the denition of an outlier might be greatly increased to a value of about 6 SD, given the extreme values at these times. It is only when all ten millennia are viewed that the great rarity of these extreme outliers can be placed in perspective. How this perspective might change if simulations of 20 000, 50 000 or 100 000 years were available is an unresolved question. Given the extreme brevity of the observational base, only a minor part of the outlier potential can have been explored at present, but Figure 1 nevertheless suggests that surface temperature anomalies outside the range 3 SD should be exceptional. In Figure 3 the normalised surface temperature anomalies for years adjacent to two of the largest outliers in Figure 2 are illustrated. Similar outcomes were obtained for the other major outliers in Figure 2. Figure 3 reveals that these outliers occur as discrete events, rather than the culmination of a series of steadily growing anomalies. Thus, there is no indication of any precursors,
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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Figure 3. Time series plots of normalised annual mean surface temperature anomalies for the same model gridboxes as used in Figure 2, illustrating the values of the anomalies adjacent to outlier years.

suggesting that stochastic processes are the cause of the outliers. In Figure 4 global distributions of surface temperature anomalies are illustrated for the three largest outliers in each of the panels in Figure 2. Global distributions are used to provide an overall perspective of the temperature anomalies associated with these outlier gridboxes. For the outlier cases shown in Figure 4 the spatial patterns are fairly extensive, as opposed to the temporal states in Figure 3. The exception is year 5619, where a very localised anomaly occurred in Asia. Substantial surface temperature anomalies, with peak amplitudes above 3K, are shown in Figure 4, not only in the vicinity of the gridboxes used in Figure 3 but also for quite separate areas. Apart from the sea-ice in the Antarctic, there was very little response in the Southern Hemisphere associated with Northern Hemispheric anomalies. While there appears to be synchronicity in the spatial response over Eurasia and North America to the presence of negative temperature anomalies in Figure 4, this was not the case for other years examined, or for the positive temperature anomalies in Figure 4. Thus, to a large extent, while an outlier can have a substantial, local spatial response, there
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does not appear to be any systematic activity in other regions. Returning to the greenhouse issue, the distribution of the positive surface temperature anomalies in Figure 4 is clearly distinct from the global warming patterns typically associated with greenhouse simulations. While the outlier anomalies are substantial in magnitude, they are regionally restricted in space (with the exception of year 2879 in Figure 4) and are temporally constrained to a single year (Figure 3). It should therefore be possible to distinguish between climatic warmings associated with the greenhouse effect and outlier events. In this context, it would seem that the extreme warming in Europe in the summer of 2003 could be categorised as an outlier event. This is not to claim that anthropogenic inuences may not have impacted on the observed European warming in 2003. An analysis by Stott et al. (2004) suggests that such inuences may have increased the probability of occurrence of this warming by 30%. In a separate study of this simulation concerned with heatwaves, it has been found that for year 5190 the characteristics of this European heatwave were replicated in remarkable detail as regards amplitude and spatial characteristics. However, this was a 1 in 10 000 year
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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Figure 4. Global distributions of annual mean surface temperature anomalies for the major outlier years shown in Figure 2. The left hand panels are for years from the USA gridbox, and the right hand panels for the ASIA gridbox. The colour bars below the panels give the anomalies in K.

occurrence in the simulation, indicating the rarity of such an event attributable solely to natural climatic variability. On this basis, a repetition of the observed European heatwave in the next decade or so would certainly suggest that anthropogenic activity rather than natural variability was the cause of such heatwaves. It is also necessary to put outlier results in context. Figure 4 reveals that in the south Atlantic sea, surface temperature anomalies are typically around 1 C, yet Figure 1 shows normalised anomalies up to 5 SD. This is a consequence of the very small value of the SD of sea surface temperature anomalies in this region. Hence, the attainment of large normalised anomaly values does not necessarily imply that the anomalies, per se, are of climatic importance.
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The monthly mean surface temperature anomalies for the USA gridbox for year 8546 and for the ASIA gridbox for year 8291 are given in Figure 5. These were two of the most extreme anomalies for the six outlier cases shown in Figure 4, and thus represent very exceptional situations. Nevertheless, such outliers can presumably be expected to occur in reality. For USA a maximum monthly mean anomaly of almost 7 C was attained in August, while for Asia the maximum value was 14 C in April. Obviously, very much larger daily anomalies would have occurred on some days during these two months: unfortunately, daily values were not saved for these millennia. Note that for both gridboxes not all months recorded anomalies of the same sign. Similar outcomes were obtained for other gridboxes and years.
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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Thus, in these situations the temporal impact of the outliers extends over much of the year. Again the results in Figure 5 highlight the large magnitude of surface temperature anomalies that can be generated by natural climatic variability.

4. RAINFALL The global distributions of the occurrence rates, over all 10 000 years of the simulation, for normalised annual mean rainfall anomalies are given in Figure 6 for three ranges of standard deviations. For 3 SD the spatial patterns of the occurrence rates are almost reversed. Over the low-latitude oceans and desert regions no rainfall anomalies reach 3 SD. This is a consequence of the low rainfall amounts in these regions, as this means that large negative deviations are difcult to achieve. On the other hand, positive deviations are attainable, and given the small SDs in these regions, high occurrence rates are achieved. In a like manner, regions with high rainfall amounts, the Congo, Indonesia and the Amazon, have relatively few occasions where anomalies attain +3 SD.
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Figure 5. Monthly mean surface temperature anomalies for year 8546 for the USA gridbox used in Figure 2 (top panel) and the corresponding anomalies for year 8291 for the ASIA gridbox (bottom panel). Copyright 2006 Royal Meteorological Society

For rainfall anomalies of +4 SD and +5 SD (Figure 6), the occurrence rates decline very rapidly and are predominantly over desert regions and low-latitude oceans, for reasons discussed above. Very few places over the globe experience rainfall anomalies reaching +5 SD. In the case of the negative anomalies in Figure 6, the decline in occurrence rate is even faster at high SD. Only over essentially jungle regions, and a few isolated gridboxes, are outliers found, with most of these restricted to 34 values over the 10 000 years of the simulation. In summary, rainfall anomalies above the range of 3 SD rarely occur in the simulation, as noted also by Hunt (2006). When considering Figure 6 in relation to the expected outcomes from a Gaussian distribution, considerable differences are apparent compared to Figure 1. For 3 SD practically all occurrence rates are below the expected value, while the large areas with zero rates are obviously even below the lower limit, for reasons discussed above. For 4 and 5 SD the occurrence rates are so low that the Gaussian expectation of zero events is achieved over virtually the whole globe. For positive SD in Figure 6 the outcomes are exceptionally non-Gaussian. Over most of the globe the occurrence rates are above the expected value for +3 SD, and the upper limit is exceeded over large regions of the Indian and Pacic oceans and desert areas. Even for +4 SD about half of the globe registered at least one event, and in some areas considerably more, although the expectation for a Gaussian distribution is zero. The situation for +5 SD in Figure 6 is therefore even more exceptional. Thus a Gaussian distribution, overall, provides a poor representation of expected outcomes as regards rainfall in this simulation. In Figure 7 time series of normalised annual mean rainfall anomalies above +3 SD and below 3 SD are plotted for gridboxes in Australia and Brazil, respectively. For Australia outliers above +4 SD occur about once per millennium on average, but after about year 6300 there is an almost two millennia gap without such an outlier. In the case of Brazil only a few outliers exceed 4 SD, and no such outliers are found for the last ve millennia. Again, these outcomes indicate that the denition of an outlier could well depend upon the specic timeframe for which data exist. Taking 3 SD as a more realistic denition of an outlier, Brazil still shows many consecutive centuries without such outliers, while clusters of outliers occur at other times. As was found for surface temperature outliers (Figure 3), the rainfall outliers also occurred as individual, discrete events with adjacent years having small anomalies of the same or opposite sign (not shown). Again this suggests that stochastic processes generate these outliers. Global distributions of annual mean rainfall anomalies for three of the largest outliers for each of the Australian and Brazilian time series shown in Figure 7 are plotted in Figure 8. Positive rainfall anomalies covered virtually the whole of Australia for the years shown in Figure 8, and in each case the Australian outlier appears to be part of a larger ENSO-like pattern. The Brazilian
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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Figure 6. Global distributions of the frequency of occurrence over 10 000 years of normalised annual mean rainfall anomalies. The left hand and right hand panels are for negative and positive anomalies, respectively. The upper, middle and lower panels are for normalised anomalies greater than 3 SD, 4 SD and 5 SD, respectively. The colour bars below the panels give the occurrence rates per 10 000 years.

rainfall anomalies were more localised, particularly year 8774. This localisation was also a feature of rainfall outliers over the North Pacic, but other locations, with smaller rainfall anomalies, had outliers as part of larger systems. Both Australia and Brazil have rainfall that is inuenced by ENSO events (Ropelewski and Halpert, 1987), with, in general, droughts associated with El Ni o events n and pluvial conditions with La Ni a events. n In this regard it should be noted that an extensive analysis of ENSO characteristics replicated by the present model has been given by Hunt and Elliott (2003) for an earlier millennial-length simulation. This analysis conrms that the model reproduces the main observed ENSO characteristics and teleconnections commendably well. In addition, AchutaRao and Sperber (2000) have conducted an intercomparison of ENSO behaviour in a range of
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models, which again reveals the satisfactory performance of the present model. The three years in Figure 8 associated with pluvial conditions were all La Ni a years of varying intensities. n Year 5182 had a weak La Ni a, while year 5181 had a n weak El Ni o with most of the preceding years forming n a weak La Ni a sequence. Years 8446 and 8447 were n strong La Ni a years with a preceding sequence of La n Ni a years. Years 9313 and 9314 were modest La Ni a n n years preceded by an El Ni o sequence. n In the case of Brazil the expected relationship with El Ni o events failed to materialise. Year 33 had an n almost asymmetric pattern of sea surface temperature anomalies in the Pacic, and was actually a weak La Ni a year, although the preceding 5 years were El Ni o n n years. Year 1589 was a strong La Ni a year, preceded n by a sequence of weak La Ni a years! Year 8774 was n
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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Figure 7. Time series of normalised annual mean rainfall for model gridboxes in Australia (27 S, 124 E) and Brazil (5 S, 50 W). For Australia only values greater than 3 SD are shown, while for Brazil only values less than 3 SD are shown.

a very weak La Ni a year preceded by a weak El Ni o n n sequence. None of the years in Figure 8 was a peak El Ni o n or La Ni a year in the 10 000 year NINO3.4 sequence. n Thus despite the ENSO connection, none of the principal outliers shown in Figure 7 was attributable to NINO3.4 outliers. While there was an ENSO inuence on some of these rainfall outliers, their development as outliers again suggests stochastic inuences. Stochastic input was noted as a possible contributor to a simulated mega drought in Mexico in the present simulation (Hunt and Elliott, 2002), while Cole et al. (2002) have also noted the necessity for undened factors to account for extended drought in USA. The monthly rainfall anomalies associated with outliers over the north Pacic Ocean and Brazil are shown in Figure 9; that for the north Pacic Ocean was selected as it reveals that practically all the anomalous rainfall for this particular year was concentrated in September. For other outlier years at this location anomalous heavy rainfall was distributed over a number of months, hence the result in Figure 9 highlights how extreme rainfall can be in outlier situations. The monthly mean anomalous
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rainfall rate for September at the north Pacic gridbox in Figure 9 was over 20 mm/day, giving a monthly anomalous total of over 670 mm, compared with its annual climatological value of 1150 mm! This particular outlier was an isolated, spatial event, unlike the situations illustrated in Figure 8. The corresponding negative rainfall anomalies for the Brazilian outlier in Figure 9 reveal rainfall decits distributed over a number of months, but with small positive anomalies still occurring in this extreme drought situation. 5. LARGE-SCALE CLIMATIC OSCILLATIONS Given the inuence of the Southern Oscillation, Pacic Decadal Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation on climatic events (see, for example, Ropelewski and Halpert, 1987; Gershunov and Barnett, 1998; Hurrell, 1995; respectively), the relationships of these phenomena to outliers were evaluated. The Southern Oscillation (SO) and NINO3.4 sea surface temperature are components of ENSO, and their relationship is illustrated in Figure 10 for a 100-year segment of the simulation. The anti-correlation between the
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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Figure 8. Global distributions of annual mean rainfall anomalies for major outlier years shown in Figure 7. The left hand panels are for years from the Australian gridbox, the right hand panels for the Brazil gridbox. The colour bars below the panels give the rainfall anomalies in mm/day.

two time series (r = 0.751 over all 10 000 years of the simulation) is very apparent in this gure. From an outlier perspective, the more important outcome is that the maxima of the two series do not necessarily coincide. Given this situation, it was decided to use the NINO3.4 time series rather than that for the SO in evaluating the role of ENSO events in generating outliers, as sea surface temperature uctuations in the low-latitude Pacic Ocean were considered to be the progenitors for ENSO impacts. A measure of the global impact of NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies over the globe is given in Figure 11. This gure shows the correlation between annual mean surface temperature anomalies at individual gridboxes and the NINO3.4 annual mean temperature anomalies for years 900110 000 of the simulation. A
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distinct ENSO-type pattern prevails in the low-latitude Pacic Ocean, while correlation values vary markedly over the globe, indicating the extent and limits of the inuence of ENSO events. The correlation pattern in Figure 11 agrees well with the observed pattern given in Figure 7(a) of Collins et al. (2001). The issue of interest here is whether NINO3.4 outlier occurrences coincide with those for surface temperature outliers at other gridboxes, implying a causative relationship as possibly suggested by Figure 11. In Figure 12, eight 50-year time series of NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies, approximately centred on La Ni a or El Ni o outliers, are plotted together n n with surface temperature anomalies for a number of gridboxes. These gridboxes were selected to cover a range of geographical regions across the globe on the
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

CLIMATIC OUTLIERS
25 Monthly mean rainfall anomaly,mm/day 20 15 10 5 0 -5

149
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10

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3 Monthly mean rainfall anomaly,mm/day 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4

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Figure 9. Monthly mean rainfall anomalies for year 6877 for a gridbox in the north Pacic Ocean (24 N, 185 E) and for year 33 for a gridbox in Brazil (5 S, 50 W), plotted in the upper and lower panels, respectively.

basis of the correlation pattern in Figure 11. The largest NINO3.4 value in each panel of Figure 12 is an outlier, as judged from all 10 000 years of the simulation. (Note that the ordinate scale differs between panels.) It is clear from this gure that apart from the top right hand panel, where the selected gridbox was located in the NINO3.4 region, all other NINO3.4 outliers do not coincide with the maximum value for the time series of the individual gridboxes. These latter values are not necessarily even outliers for these gridboxes. This outcome holds for both La Ni a events in the left hand panels and El n Ni o events in the right hand panels of Figure 12. n Thus, despite the correlation relationships indicated in Figure 11, such correlations do not result in outliers for individual gridboxes being contemporaneous with NINO3.4 outliers. Thus ENSO events are not progenitors of outliers external to the NINO3.4 region. Whether ENSO events precondition the climatic system, owing to their large spatial signature, and thus inuence the subsequent occurrence of outliers is unknown. The relationship of the PDO to ENSO outliers is shown in Figure 13 for two typical La Ni a and El Ni o cases. n n In general, there is an expectation that the PDO will have the same sign as the concurrent ENSO event (see
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the discussion by Newman et al. (2003)). This situation partially prevails in Figure 13 and in other outlier cases examined. Over all 10 000 years of the simulation, the correlation coefcient between these two time series was 0.297. PDO outlier values were close to 0.5 C or greater, a value attained only in the panel for year 5962 in Figure 13, indicating that, in general, PDO and ENSO outliers were not synchronous. Given the spatial extent over which the PDO is evaluated, which does not include the NINO3.4 region, this result is understandable for extreme events such as outliers. In addition, PDO outliers were not synchronous with the outliers for the various gridboxes used in Figure 12. Thus, neither the PDO nor ENSO is associated with climatic outliers at individual gridboxes outside the NINO3.4 region. The relationship of the NAO to climatic outliers, specically surface temperature outliers, was investigated for two positive and two negative NAO outliers. Hurrell (1995) has identied three regions where surface temperature anomalies are probably inuenced by the NAO. Time series of surface temperature anomalies from the simulation were generated for gridboxes located in the middle of each of those regions, i.e. central North America, central north Atlantic Ocean and central Asia. Then,
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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1 0.8 Annual mean surface temperature anomalies,K 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 -0.2 -0.4 -0.6

B. G. HUNT

SOI NINO3.4

4010 4020 4030 4040 4050 4060 4070 4080 4090 4100 Years

Figure 10. A 100-year time series of the Southern Oscillation Index and NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies from the 10 000-year simulation. The ordinate scale is for the NINO3.4 time series only.
90N 60N 30N 0 30S 60S 90S 0 60E 120E 180 120W 60W 0

-.6

-.5

-.4

-.2

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Figure 11. Correlation pattern between the NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies and surface temperature anomalies at individual model gridboxes. Results are for years 900110 000 of the simulation. The colour bar gives the value of the correlation coefcient.

50-year time series for the NAO and each of the surface temperature anomalies centred on the NAO outlier were plotted (not shown), similar to Figure 12. In no cases did surface temperature outliers for these gridboxes coincide with any of the four NAO outliers, indicating that the former were not related to the NAO. A brief discussion was given in the previous section concerning the relationship of rainfall outliers in Figure 8, to ENSO events. A more specic examination of this relationship is undertaken here. In Figure 14, the annual mean surface temperature anomalies are illustrated for the most positive NINO3.4 outlier (year 4888), and the most negative NINO3.4 outlier (year 9396). Distinct El Ni o and La Ni a patterns were obtained in the n n Pacic Ocean for these years. The corresponding annual mean rainfall anomalies are shown in the middle panels, and the normalised annual mean anomalies in the lower panels of Figure 14. The large-scale shifts in the rainfall patterns associated with El Ni o and La Ni a events are n n well dened in the gure, especially for the low-latitude Pacic Ocean.
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Examining the normalised rainfall anomalies in Figure 14 reveals that for these, the largest ENSO outlier events, rainfall outliers were not generated over Australia or Brazil. Figure 7 shows that positive rainfall outliers over Australia, usually associated with La Ni a events, n are above +4 SD. For the La Ni a year in Figure 14, left n hand panels, small negative normalised rainfall anomalies occurred over southeastern Australia, the opposite of expectations. Again, for the El Nino year in Figure 14, right hand panels, the expectation is for drought over Brazil. Drought did occur, but the normalised rainfall anomally was only about 1 SD, whereas in Figure 7 such outliers for Brazil are below 3 SD. Whether rainfall outliers were attained at other model gridboxes in Figure 14 would require examination at all 3584 gridboxes, but a comparison of the limited range of the normalised anomalies in Figure 14 with the results in Figure 6 would suggest that rather few rainfall outliers would have been obtained. Hence, Figure 14, taken in conjunction with Figure 8, strongly indicates that major ENSO events do not generate corresponding rainfall outliers.
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

CLIMATIC OUTLIERS
Annual mean surface temperature anomalies,K Annual mean surface temperature anomalies,K

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Figure 12. Fifty-year time series of NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies and surface temperature anomalies for selected model gridboxes. The time series are approximately centred on ENSO outliers. La Ni a and El Ni o results are given in the left and right hand panels, respectively. n n The NINO3.4 outlier years are indicated on the individual panels. Note that different ordinate scales are used in some panels. The time series for the individual gridboxes have been shifted half a year to the right for clarity. The selected model gridboxes are located as follows: AA1, 0 N, 180 E; AA2, 0 N, 150 E; AA3, 45 N, 90 W; AA4, 45 S, 90 E; AA5, 15 S, 30 W.

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0.8 Annual mean surface temperature anomalies,K 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 -0.2 -0.4 -0.6 -0.8 -1 6075 6085 6095 6105 6115 Year=6092 NINO3.4 PDO

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Years NINO3.4 PDO

6665 6675 Years

6685

6695

Figure 13. Fifty-year time series of NINO3.4 and PDO sea surface temperature anomalies. The time series are approximately centred on ENSO outliers. La Ni a and El Ni o results are given in the left and right hand panels, respectively. The NINO3.4 outlier years are indicated on the n n individual panels. The PDO time series has been shifted half a year to the right for clarity.

An analysis of the association of NAO outliers with rainfall outliers, similar to that for surface temperature anomalies discussed above, also produced a null relationship. In conclusion, the deterministic processes associated with large-scale climatic oscillations had a minimal role in exciting either rainfall or surface temperature outliers. This leaves stochastic processes as the most likely generator of climatic outliers.

6. OUTLIER VERSUS SEVERE CLIMATIC EVENTS The above results are concerned primarily with documenting the characteristics of outlier events. It is also necessary to provide a perspective of the relative magnitudes of outlier and severe climatic anomalies; this can be obtained from the probability density functions in Figure 15. These show the frequency of occurrence, over all 10 000 years of the simulation, of normalised rainfall anomalies for a gridbox in Brazil (5 S, 50 W) and normalised surface temperature anomalies for a USA gridbox (45 N, 100 W). Both histograms are slightly skewed towards more extreme negative events, but are close to Gaussian distributions. For the purposes of the present discussion a severe event was dened, using Figure 15 for guidance, to be 2 SD from the mean.
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For the Brazilian gridbox, monthly rainfall anomalies are plotted in Figure 16 for year 1589, a marked outlier year (Figure 7), and year 4087, a severe year. These years had annual mean rainfall anomalies of 5 SD and 2 SD, respectively. The corresponding rainfall deciencies for these 2 years were 430 mm and 175 mm, respectively. As noted in relation to Figure 9, not every month of these drought years had below-average rainfall, but there were fewer positive anomalies for the outlier year, and of course, more extensive negative anomalies (Figure 16). The spatial characteristics associated with severe and outlier years identied for the Brazilian and USA gridboxes for annual mean rainfall and surface temperature, respectively, are shown in Figure 17. For the Brazilian gridbox, the outlier year (1589) not only had a larger rainfall decit but also a more extensive spatial pattern than that for the extreme year (4087) (Figure 17). There was also substantial spatial variability in the monthly rainfall anomaly patterns for these 2 years. In general, there were larger rainfall anomalies over the globe for the outlier year. For the USA gridbox, the surface temperature outlier was only 3.3 SD, year 4140, while for the severe case it was 2 SD, year 5128. Despite this smaller difference compared to the normalised rainfall anomalies for the Brazilian gridbox, Figure 17 reveals distinctly different surface temperature anomaly patterns over the USA for these
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Figure 14. Global plots of surface temperature anomalies, rainfall anomalies and normalised rainfall anomalies for annual mean conditions (top, middle and bottom panels, respectively). The left hand panels are for year 9396 which had the largest NINO3.4 negative surface temperature anomaly, while the right hand panels are for year 4888 which had the largest NINO3.4 positive surface temperature anomaly.

2 years. The outlier temperature anomaly was greater in magnitude but more limited spatially, in contrast to the Brazilian rainfall patterns in Figure 17. There were also substantially different temperature anomaly patterns over Europe and Asia between the two years, which was attributable to the vagaries of climatic variability. While outlier years are infrequent, it is clear that they will have a very signicant impact compared to the more typical severe years of common experience. 7. CONCLUSIONS On the basis of a 10 000-year simulation of the CSIRO Mark2 climatic model, it has been shown that for annual mean values of surface temperature and rainfall
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there are relatively few outliers exceeding the range of 3 SD. Most outliers above this range tend to be located over the oceans. At individual gridboxes, high values of normalised anomalies do not necessarily imply climatically signicant anomalies, as the associated SD may be quite small. Hence individual cases need to be examined carefully. ENSO-type patterns can be discerned in the 3 SD normalised anomaly distributions over the Pacic Ocean, but not necessarily for more extreme outliers. Examination of the temporal variations of outliers at individual model gridboxes revealed a range of responses. In some centuries multiple outliers occurred, while thousand year intervals without outliers of the specied magnitude were also found. Thus the magnitude of what
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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0.2 0.18 Probability of occurrence 0.16 0.14 0.12 0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0 -8 -6

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0.25

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Figure 15. Probability density functions for all 10 000 years of the simulation illustrating the frequency of occurrence of normalised rainfall anomalies for a Brazilian gridbox (5 S, 50 W)(upper panel), and for surface temperature for a USA gridbox (40 N, 100 W) (lower panel).

is perceived to be an outlier can vary from millennium to millennium. This has the important implication that what is currently considered to be the greatest observed outlier to date may not be representative of the true, much larger, outliers that could occur in the future. Examination of the time series of anomalies in the vicinity of an outlier (Figure 3) highlights the singular nature of outliers, with no apparent build up or subsequent decay in anomaly values adjacent to an outlier year. The lack of any precursor signal, in particular, emphasises the random, unpredictable nature of outliers, and that there is no predictive capability associated with the occurrence of outliers. For most of the outlier events examined, outlier-related anomalous activity occurred over a number of months in an outlier year, but with some months still having opposite-signed anomalies, although of small magnitude. Spatially, outliers had a substantial regional signature indicating that they were part of a larger synoptic system. However, there was no apparent relationship with other regions. No compelling connections could be discerned between outlier occurrences and ENSO, PDO or NAO outliers. In
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2 Monthly mean rainfall anomaly,mm/day 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4

8 Months

10

12

14

Figure 16. Monthly mean rainfall anomalies for a Brazilian gridbox (5 S, 50 W) for an outlier year (1589), full lines, and a severe year (4087), dashed lines. The results for year 4087 have been moved half a month to the right for clarity.

particular, outliers associated with these phenomena were shown not to be contemporaneous with outliers for gridboxes in regions inuenced by these oscillations, other than the NINO3.4 region.
Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc

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Figure 17. Global distributions of annual mean rainfall (left panels) and surface temperature (right panels) anomalies for outlier years and severe years. The distributions for the outlier years are in the top panels, and for the severe years in the lower panels. For rainfall the outlier year was identied for a gridbox in Brazil, while for surface temperature the outlier year was identied for a gridbox in the USA. The severe years were arbitrarily selected as years with anomalies of 2 SD for these two gridboxes.

On the basis of all the above analyses it is concluded that outliers at individual gridboxes should be viewed as the manifestation of stochastic forcing. Finally, a case study was undertaken to illustrate the substantial quantitative differences between climatic events associated with outliers (5 SD) and severe anomalies (2 SD), see Figure 16 and Figure 17. This study of outliers is also of considerable relevance concerning the ongoing public debate about the reality of the greenhouse effect. As part of this debate there is a tendency for any major drought or heatwave to be attributed to this effect. Given the centennial and millennial temporal variability obtained in this simulation, any such attributions, as regards individual years, could well be spurious. The very limited observational timeframe is completely inadequate to quantify the possible range of climatic anomalies that can occur solely owing to naturally occurring climatic variability. If, for example, the past century of climatic observations embraces a relatively quiescent phase of outlier occurrence, then we might assign, erroneously, larger outlier magnitudes when they occur to the greenhouse effect rather than natural variability. As has been shown above, outliers occur essentially randomly in time and have a regional spatial signature. In contrast, the present global warming is widespread spatially and, to a large extent, continuous in time. Outliers
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will continue to occur as the greenhouse effect progresses but their isolated nature should permit them to be seen as such, rather than as a constituent component of the greenhouse warming. The ability of natural climatic variability to locally overwhelm greenhouse-induced climatic change has been demonstrated by Hunt and Elliott (2004) in the case of cold outbreaks. However, if, say, heatwaves, such as occurred in Europe in 2003, increase in frequency for a given region, then this would suggest a greenhouse inuence rather than being attributable to outliers.
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B. G. HUNT Jones PD, Mann ME. 2004. Climate over past millennia. Reviews of Geophysics 42(1): 142. Newman M, Compo GP, Alexander MA. 2003. ENSO-forced variability of the Pacic Decadal Oscillation. Journal of Climate 16: 38533857. Osborn TJ, Briffa KR, Tett SFB, Jones PD, Trigo RM. 1999. Evaluation of the North Atlantic Oscillation as simulated by a coupled model. Climate Dynamics 15: 685702. Ropelewski CF, Halpert MS. 1987. Global and regional scale precipitation patterns associated with the El Ni o/Southern n Oscillation. Monthly Weather Review 115: 16061626. Schar C, Vidale PL, Luthi D, Frei C, Haberll C, Liniger MA, Appenzeller C. 2004. The role of increasing temperature variability in European summer heatwaves. Nature 427: 332336. Stahle DW, Cook ER, Cleaveland MK, Thirrell MD, Meko DM, Grissino-Mayer HD, Watson E, Luckman BH, 2000. Tree-ring data document 16th century megadrought over North America. EOS 81: 121, 125. Stott PA, Stone DA, Allen MR. 2004. Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003. Nature 432: 610614. Stouffer RJ, Hegerl G, Tett S. 2000. A comparison of surface air variability in three 1000-yr coupled ocean-atmosphere model integrations. Journal of Climate 13: 513537.

Fye FK, Stahle DW, Cook ER. 2003. Paleoclimatic analogs to twentieth-century moisture regimes across the United States. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 84: 901909. Gershunov A, Barnett TP. 1998. Interdecadal modulation of ENSO teleconnections. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 79: 27152725. Gordon HB, OFarrell SP. 1997. Transient climate change in the CSIRO coupled climate model with dynamical sea ice. Monthly Weather Review 125: 875907. Gumbel EJ. 1954. Statistical Theory of Extreme Values and Some Practical Applications, National Bureau of Standards Applied Mathematics Series No. 33 . US Government Printing Ofce: Washington, DC. Hunt BG. 2004. The stationarity of global mean climate. International Journal of Climatology 24: 795806. Hunt BG. 2006. Climatology of simulated annual mean rainfall extremes. Journal of Climate In press. Hunt BG, Elliott TI. 2002. Mexican megadrought. Climate Dynamics 20: 112. Hunt BG, Elliott TI. 2003. Secular variability of ENSO events in a 1000-year climatic simulation. Climate Dynamics 20: 689703. Hunt BG, Elliott TI. 2004. Interaction of climatic variability with climatic change. Atmosphere-Ocean 42: 145172. Hurrell JW. 1995. Decadal trends in the North Atlantic Oscillation: regional temperatures and precipitation. Science 269: 676679.

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Int. J. Climatol. 27: 139156 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/joc