Causes of Eurasian Winter‐Cooling During the Late 20th and Early 21st Century

Abstract Pronounced negative trends in wintertime near‐surface temperature have been observed over Eurasia during 1993–2013. It is unclear whether the cooling was due to internal atmospheric variability or forced from either the ocean surface or changes in atmospheric composition. In this study, we use ensembles of atmosphere‐model integrations for the period 1993–2013 to investigate the mechanisms of the wintertime cooling over Eurasia. We find that the cooling was primarily driven by intrinsic atmospheric variability, specifically the North Atlantic Oscillation, and to a lesser extent by multidecadal ocean variability such as the Interdecadal Pacific Variability. There was not much influence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability on Eurasian cooling. A dominant role for atmospheric variability as shown by our results implies limited predictability of decadal climate variability over Eurasia.