| Summary: | <p>Much of the forecast skill in the mid-latitudes on seasonal
timescales originates from deep convection in the tropical belt. For boreal
summer, such tropical–extratropical teleconnections are less well understood
compared to winter. Here we validate the representation of boreal summer
tropical–extratropical teleconnections in a general circulation model in
comparison with observational data. To characterise variability between
tropical convective activity and mid-latitude circulation, we identify the
South Asian monsoon (SAM)–circumglobal teleconnection (CGT) pattern and
the western North Pacific summer monsoon (WNPSM)–North Pacific high (NPH)
pairs as the leading modes of tropical–extratropical coupled variability in
both reanalysis (ERA5) and seasonal forecast (SEAS5) data. We calculate
causal maps based on the Peter and Clark momentary conditional independence
(PCMCI) causal discovery algorithm, which identifies causal links in a 2D
field, to show the causal effect of each of these patterns on circulation
and convection in the Northern Hemisphere. The spatial patterns and signs of
the causal links in SEAS5 closely resemble those seen in ERA5, independent
of the initialisation date of SEAS5. By performing a subsampling experiment
(over time), we analyse the strengths of causal links in SEAS5 and show that
they are qualitatively weaker than those in ERA5. We identify those regions
for which SEAS5 data well reproduce ERA5 values, e.g. the southeastern USA,
and highlight those where the bias is more prominent, e.g. North Africa and
in general tropical regions. We demonstrate that different El Niño–Southern Oscillation phases have only a marginal effect on the strength of
these links. Finally, we discuss the potential role of model mean-state
biases in explaining differences between SEAS5 and ERA5 causal links.</p>
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