scholarly journals Long-Term Behavior of the Atlantic Interhemispheric SST Gradient in the CMIP5 Historical Simulations

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (21) ◽  
pp. 8628-8640 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. H. Chiang ◽  
C.-Y. Chang ◽  
M. F. Wehner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Coupled Model ◽  
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation ◽  
Forced Response ◽  
Cmip5 Models ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosols ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosol ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Hadley Centre

Abstract Multidecadal and longer changes to the Atlantic interhemispheric sea surface temperature gradient (AITG) in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) historical simulations are investigated. Observations show a secular trend to this gradient over most of the twentieth century, with the southern lobe warming faster relative to its northern counterpart. A previous study of phase 3 of the CMIP (CMIP3) suggests that this trend is partially forced by anthropogenic sulfate aerosols. This analysis collectively confirms the partially forced trend for the CMIP5 and by anthropogenic aerosols. Like the CMIP3, the CMIP5 also simulates a reversal in the AITG trend in the late 1970s, which was attributed to a leveling off of the anthropogenic aerosol influence and increased influence of greenhouse gases in the late twentieth century. Two (of 25) CMIP5 models, however, systematically simulate a twentieth-century trend opposite to observed, leading to some uncertainty regarding the forced nature of the AITG trend. The observed AITG also exhibits a pronounced multidecadal modulation on top of the trend, associated with the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO). Motivated by a recent suggestion that the AMO is a forced response to aerosols, the causes of this multidecadal behavior were also examined. A few of the CMIP5 models analyzed do produce multidecadal AITG variations that are correlated to the observed AMO-like variation, but only one, the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model, version 2 (HadGEM2), systematically simulates AMO-like behavior with both the requisite amplitude and phase. The CMIP5 simulations thus point to a robust aerosol influence on the historical AITG trend but not to the AMO-like multidecadal behavior.

scholarly journals Impacts of the 1900–74 Increase in Anthropogenic Aerosol Emissions from North America and Europe on Eurasian Summer Climate

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (20) ◽  
pp. 8381-8399 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Undorf ◽  
M. A. Bollasina ◽  
G. C. Hegerl
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Coupled Model ◽  
Temporal Variations ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosols ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosol ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Summer Climate ◽  
Aerosol Emissions ◽  
The Impact

The impact of North American and European (NAEU) anthropogenic aerosol emissions on Eurasian summer climate during the twentieth century is studied using historical single- and all-forcing (including anthropogenic aerosols, greenhouse gases, and natural forcings) simulations from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Intermodel agreement on significant linear trends during a period of increasing NAEU sulfate emissions (1900–74) reveals robust features of NAEU aerosol impact, supported by opposite changes during the subsequent period of decreasing emissions. Regionally, these include a large-scale cooling and associated anticyclonic circulation, as well as a narrowing of the diurnal temperature range (DTR) over Eurasian midlatitudes. Remotely, NAEU aerosols induce a drying over the western African and northern Indian monsoon regions and a strengthening and southward shift of the subtropical jet consistent with the pattern of temperature change. Over Europe, the temporal variations of observed temperature, pressure, and DTR tend to agree better with simulations that include aerosols. Throughout the twentieth century, aerosols are estimated to explain more than a third of the simulated interdecadal forced variability of European near-surface temperature and more than half between 1940 and 1970. These results highlight the substantial aerosol impact on Eurasian climate, already identifiable in the first half of the twentieth century. This may be relevant for understanding future patterns of change related to further emission reductions.

scholarly journals Cloud albedo changes in response to anthropogenic sulfate and non-sulfate aerosol forcings in CMIP5 models

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (14) ◽  
pp. 9145-9162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Frey ◽  
Frida A.-M. Bender ◽  
Gunilla Svensson
Keyword(s):  
Water Content ◽  
Liquid Water ◽  
Coupled Model ◽  
Cmip5 Models ◽  
Liquid Water Path ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosols ◽  
Aerosol Composition ◽  
Cloud Albedo ◽  
Cloud Water Content ◽  
Absorbing Aerosols

Abstract. The effects of different aerosol types on cloud albedo are analysed using the linear relation between total albedo and cloud fraction found on a monthly mean scale in regions of subtropical marine stratocumulus clouds and the influence of simulated aerosol variations on this relation. Model experiments from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) are used to separately study the responses to increases in sulfate, non-sulfate and all anthropogenic aerosols. A cloud brightening on the month-to-month scale due to variability in the background aerosol is found to dominate even in the cases where anthropogenic aerosols are added. The aerosol composition is of importance for this cloud brightening, that is thereby region dependent. There is indication that absorbing aerosols to some extent counteract the cloud brightening but scene darkening with increasing aerosol burden is generally not supported, even in regions where absorbing aerosols dominate. Month-to-month cloud albedo variability also confirms the importance of liquid water content for cloud albedo. Regional, monthly mean cloud albedo is found to increase with the addition of anthropogenic aerosols and more so with sulfate than non-sulfate. Changes in cloud albedo between experiments are related to changes in cloud water content as well as droplet size distribution changes, so that models with large increases in liquid water path and/or cloud droplet number show large cloud albedo increases with increasing aerosol. However, no clear relation between model sensitivities to aerosol variations on the month-to-month scale and changes in cloud albedo due to changed aerosol burden is found.

scholarly journals Agreement in late twentieth century Southern Hemisphere stratospheric temperature trends in observations and CCMVal-2, CMIP3, and CMIP5 models

2013 ◽  
Vol 118 (2) ◽  
pp. 605-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Young ◽  
Amy H. Butler ◽  
Natalia Calvo ◽  
Leopold Haimberger ◽  
Paul J. Kushner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Southern Hemisphere ◽  
Cmip5 Models ◽  
Stratospheric Temperature ◽  
Temperature Trends ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

scholarly journals Reply to “Comment on ‘Rethinking the Lower Bound on Aerosol Radiative Forcing’”

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (16) ◽  
pp. 6585-6589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjorn Stevens ◽  
Stephanie Fiedler
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Lower Bound ◽  
Radiative Forcing ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosols ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosol ◽  
Aerosol Radiative Forcing ◽  
Clear Sky ◽  
The North ◽  
Aerosol Forcing

Kretzschmar et al., in a comment in 2017, use the spread in the output of aerosol–climate models to argue that the models refute the hypothesis (presented in a paper by Stevens in 2015) that for the mid-twentieth-century warming to be consistent with observations, then the present-day aerosol forcing, [Formula: see text] must be less negative than −1 W m−2. The main point of contention is the nature of the relationship between global SO2 emissions and [Formula: see text] In contrast to the concave (log-linear) relationship used by Stevens and in earlier studies, whereby [Formula: see text] becomes progressively less sensitive to SO2 emissions, some models suggest a convex relationship, which would imply a less negative lower bound. The model that best exemplifies this difference, and that is most clearly in conflict with the hypothesis of Stevens, does so because of an implausible aerosol response to the initial rise in anthropogenic aerosol precursor emissions in East and South Asia—already in 1975 this model’s clear-sky reflectance from anthropogenic aerosol over the North Pacific exceeds present-day estimates of the clear-sky reflectance by the total aerosol. The authors perform experiments using a new (observationally constrained) climatology of anthropogenic aerosols to further show that the effects of changing patterns of aerosol and aerosol precursor emissions during the late twentieth century have, for the same global emissions, relatively little effect on [Formula: see text] These findings suggest that the behavior Kretzschmar et al. identify as being in conflict with the lower bound in Stevens arises from an implausible relationship between SO2 emissions and [Formula: see text] and thus provides little basis for revising this lower bound.

scholarly journals Intermodel Variability and Mechanism Attribution of Central and Southeastern U.S. Anomalous Cooling in the Twentieth Century as Simulated by CMIP5 Models

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (17) ◽  
pp. 6215-6237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zaitao Pan ◽  
Xiaodong Liu ◽  
Sanjiv Kumar ◽  
Zhiqiu Gao ◽  
James Kinter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Coupled Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cmip5 Models ◽  
Model Intercomparison ◽  
Central United States ◽  
Intercomparison Project

Abstract Some parts of the United States, especially the southeastern and central portion, cooled by up to 2°C during the twentieth century, while the global mean temperature rose by 0.6°C (0.76°C from 1901 to 2006). Studies have suggested that the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) may be responsible for this cooling, termed the “warming hole” (WH), while other works reported that regional-scale processes such as the low-level jet and evapotranspiration contribute to the abnormity. In phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3), only a few of the 53 simulations could reproduce the cooling. This study analyzes newly available simulations in experiments from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) from 28 models, totaling 175 ensemble members. It was found that 1) only 19 out of 100 all-forcing historical ensemble members simulated negative temperature trend (cooling) over the southeast United States, with 99 members underpredicting the cooling rate in the region; 2) the missing of cooling in the models is likely due to the poor performance in simulating the spatial pattern of the cooling rather than the temporal variation, as indicated by a larger temporal correlation coefficient than spatial one between the observation and simulations; 3) the simulations with greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing only produced strong warming in the central United States that may have compensated the cooling; and 4) the all-forcing historical experiment compared with the natural-forcing-only experiment showed a well-defined WH in the central United States, suggesting that land surface processes, among others, could have contributed to the cooling in the twentieth century.

scholarly journals What Surface Observations Are Important for Separating the Influences of Anthropogenic Aerosols from Other Forcings?

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 4165-4184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoqin Yan ◽  
Timothy DelSole ◽  
Michael K. Tippett
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Structure ◽  
Surface Temperature ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Accurate Estimate ◽  
Forced Response ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosols ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosol ◽  
Sea Level Pressure ◽  
Level Pressure

Abstract This paper shows that joint temperature–precipitation information over a global domain provides a more accurate estimate of aerosol forced responses in climate models than does any other combination of temperature, precipitation, or sea level pressure. This fact is demonstrated using a new quantity called potential detectability, which measures the extent to which a forced response can be detected in a model. In particular, this measure can be evaluated independently of observations and therefore permits efficient exploration of a large number of variable combinations before performing optimal fingerprinting on observations. This paper also shows that the response to anthropogenic aerosol forcing can be separated from that of other forcings using only spatial structure alone, leaving the time variation of the response to be inferred from data, thereby demonstrating that temporal information is not necessary for detection. The spatial structure of the forced response is derived by maximizing the signal-to-noise ratio. For single variables, the north–south hemispheric gradient and equator-to-pole latitudinal gradient are important spatial structures for detecting anthropogenic aerosols in some models but not all. Sea level pressure is not an independent detection variable because it is derived partly from surface temperature. In no case does sea level pressure significantly enhance potential detectability beyond that already possible using surface temperature. Including seasonal or land–sea contrast information does not significantly enhance detectability of anthropogenic aerosol responses relative to annual means over global domains.

scholarly journals Cloud albedo changes in response to anthropogenic sulfate and non-sulfate aerosol forcings in CMIP5 models

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Frey ◽  
Frida A.-M. Bender ◽  
Gunilla Svensson
Keyword(s):  
Coupled Model ◽  
Cmip5 Models ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosols ◽  
Aerosol Composition ◽  
Cloud Albedo ◽  
Aerosol Forcing ◽  
Cloud Water Content ◽  
Stratocumulus Clouds ◽  
Relation Model ◽  
Absorbing Aerosols

Abstract. The effects of different aerosol types on cloud albedo are analyzed using the linear relation between total albedo and cloud fraction found on monthly mean scale in regions of subtropical marine stratocumulus clouds, and the influence of Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) on this relation. Model experiments from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) are used to separately study the responses to increases in sulfate, non-sulfate and all anthropogenic aerosols. A cloud brightening on month-to month scale due to variability in the background aerosol is found to dominate even in the cases where anthropogenic aerosols are added. The aerosol composition is found to be of importance for this cloud brightening, that is thereby region dependent. There is indication that absorbing aerosols to some extent counteract the cloud brightening, but scene darkening with increasing aerosol burden is generally not supported, even in regions where absorbing aerosols dominate. Regional, monthly mean cloud albedo is found to increase with the addition of anthropogenic aerosols, and more so with sulfate than non-sulfate. The changes in AOD due to anthropogenic aerosols are typically small compared to the AOD variability within a given aerosol forcing scenario, and the magnitude of the change in cloud albedo due to anthropogenic aerosols is small and not directly related to the strength of the month-to-month cloud brightening due to aerosols. The diversity in changes in cloud albedo in this set of models is rather related to the different changes in cloud water content between the experiments.

scholarly journals Sulfate Aerosol Control of Tropical Atlantic Climate over the Twentieth Century

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (10) ◽  
pp. 2540-2555 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.-Y. Chang ◽  
J. C. H. Chiang ◽  
M. F. Wehner ◽  
A. R. Friedman ◽  
R. Ruedy
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation ◽  
Forced Response ◽  
Sulfate Aerosol ◽  
Tropical Atlantic ◽  
Atlantic Sector ◽  
The North ◽  
Aerosol Forcing ◽  
Climate Forcings ◽  
Aerosol Emissions

Abstract The tropical Atlantic interhemispheric gradient in sea surface temperature significantly influences the rainfall climate of the tropical Atlantic sector, including droughts over West Africa and Northeast Brazil. This gradient exhibits a secular trend from the beginning of the twentieth century until the 1980s, with stronger warming in the south relative to the north. This trend behavior is on top of a multidecadal variation associated with the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. A similar long-term forced trend is found in a multimodel ensemble of forced twentieth-century climate simulations. Through examining the distribution of the trend slopes in the multimodel twentieth-century and preindustrial models, the authors conclude that the observed trend in the gradient is unlikely to arise purely from natural variations; this study suggests that at least half the observed trend is a forced response to twentieth-century climate forcings. Further analysis using twentieth-century single-forcing runs indicates that sulfate aerosol forcing is the predominant cause of the multimodel trend. The authors conclude that anthropogenic sulfate aerosol emissions, originating predominantly from the Northern Hemisphere, may have significantly altered the tropical Atlantic rainfall climate over the twentieth century.

The Response of the Indian Ocean Dipole Asymmetry to Anthropogenic Aerosols and Greenhouse Gases

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2564-2583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Cowan ◽  
Wenju Cai ◽  
Benjamin Ng ◽  
Matthew England
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Indian Ocean Dipole ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Coupled Model ◽  
Tropical Indian Ocean ◽  
Cmip5 Models ◽  
Anthropogenic Aerosols ◽  
The West ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Abstract The tropical Indian Ocean has experienced a faster warming rate in the west than in the east over the twentieth century. The warming pattern resembles a positive Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) that is well captured by climate models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), forced with the two main anthropogenic forcings, long-lived greenhouse gases (GHGs), and aerosols. However, much less is known about how GHGs and aerosols influence the IOD asymmetry, including the negative sea surface temperature (SST) skewness in the east IOD pole (IODE). Here, it is shown that the IODE SST negative skewness is more enhanced by aerosols than by GHGs using single-factor forcing experiments from 10 CMIP5 models. Aerosols induce a greater mean zonal thermocline gradient along the tropical Indian Ocean than that forced by GHGs, whereby the thermocline is deeper in the east relative to the west. This generates strong asymmetry in the SST response to thermocline anomalies between warm and cool IODE phases in the aerosol-only experiments, enhancing the negative IODE SST skewness. Other feedback processes involving zonal wind, precipitation, and evaporation cannot solely explain the enhanced SST skewness by aerosols. An interexperiment comparison in one model with strong skewness confirms that the mean zonal thermocline gradient across the Indian Ocean determines the magnitude of the SST–thermocline asymmetry, which in turn controls the SST skewness strength. The findings suggest that as aerosol emissions decline and GHGs increase, this will likely contribute to a future weakening of the IODE SST skewness.

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