North Atlantic Surface Winds Examined as the Source of Warm Advection into Europe in Winter

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Otterman, J.; Angell, J. K.; Ardizzone, J.; Atlas, Robert; Schubert, S.; Starr, D.; Wu, M.-L.

2002-01-01

When from the southwest, North Atlantic ocean surface winds are known to bring warm and moist airmasses into central Europe in winter. By tracing backward trajectories from western Europe, we establish that these airmasses originate in the southwestern North Atlantic, in the very warm regions of the Gulf Stream. Over the eastern North Atlantic, Lt the gateway to Europe, the ocean-surface winds changed directions in the second half of the XXth century, those from the northwest and from the southeast becoming so infrequent, that the direction from the southwest became even more dominant. For the January-to-March period, the strength of south-westerlies in this region, as well as in the source region, shows in the years 1948-1995 a significant increase, above 0.2 m/sec/ decade. Based on the sensitivity of the surface temperature in Europe, slightly more than 1 C for a 1m/sec increase in the southwesterly wind, found in the previous studies, the trend in the warm advection accounts for a large part of the warming in Europe established for this period in several reports. However, for the most recent years, 1996-2001, the positive trend in the southwesterly advection appears to be is broken, which is consistent with unseasonally cold events reported in Europe in those winters. This study had, some bearing on evaluating the respective roles of the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Greenhouse Gas Global warming, GGG, in the strong winter warming observed for about half a century over the northern-latitude continents. Changes in the ocean-surface temperatures induced by GGG may have produced the dominant southwesterly direction of the North Atlantic winds. However, this implies a monotonically (apart from inherent interannual variability) increasing advection, and if the break in the trend which we observe after 1995 persists, this mechanism is counter-indicated. The 1948-1995 trend in the south-westerlies could then be considered to a large degree attributable to the North Atlantic Oscillation.

Investigating warming trends and spatial patterns of Land Surface Temperatures over the Greater Los Angeles Area using new MODIS and VIIRS LST products

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Malakar, N. K.; Hulley, G. C.

2016-12-01

The Los Angeles (LA) metropolitan area is one of the fastest growing urban centers in the United States, and home to roughly 18 million people. Understanding the trends and impacts of warming temperatures in urban environments is an increasingly important issue in our changing climate. We used thermal infrared data from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensors to retrieve Land Surface Temperature using a new Temperature Emissivity Separation algorithm adapted for these sensors. We analyzed day and night LST retrievals to study the warming trends of LST for the greater LA region from 2002-2015. The average warming trend over LA for summer days and nights over this period for MODIS Aqua data was 1.1 °C per decade, while a more rapid warming is observed for the years 2012-2016 for both MODIS and VIIRS observations. We have also found that inland LA regions are warming more rapidly than the other regions. We further investigate the underlying cause of the warming by looking into the physical factors such as changes in net radiation, cloud cover, and evapotranspiration. The results will help to understand how indicators of climate change are evolving in the beginning of the 21st century, and how they compare with global climate model projections. Identification of potential impacts, and underlying causes of warming trends in various LA regions will help decision makers to develop policies to help mitigate the effects of rising temperatures.

Trends in continental temperature and humidity directly linked to ocean warming.

PubMed

Byrne, Michael P; O'Gorman, Paul A

2018-05-08

In recent decades, the land surface has warmed substantially more than the ocean surface, and relative humidity has fallen over land. Amplified warming and declining relative humidity over land are also dominant features of future climate projections, with implications for climate-change impacts. An emerging body of research has shown how constraints from atmospheric dynamics and moisture budgets are important for projected future land-ocean contrasts, but these ideas have not been used to investigate temperature and humidity records over recent decades. Here we show how both the temperature and humidity changes observed over land between 1979 and 2016 are linked to warming over neighboring oceans. A simple analytical theory, based on atmospheric dynamics and moisture transport, predicts equal changes in moist static energy over land and ocean and equal fractional changes in specific humidity over land and ocean. The theory is shown to be consistent with the observed trends in land temperature and humidity given the warming over ocean. Amplified land warming is needed for the increase in moist static energy over drier land to match that over ocean, and land relative humidity decreases because land specific humidity is linked via moisture transport to the weaker warming over ocean. However, there is considerable variability about the best-fit trend in land relative humidity that requires further investigation and which may be related to factors such as changes in atmospheric circulations and land-surface properties.

Temperature Trends in the Tropical Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere: Connections with Sea Surface Temperatures and Implications for Water Vapor and Ozone

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Garfinkel, C. I.; Waugh, D. W.; Oman, L. D.; Wang, L.; Hurwitz, M. M.

2013-01-01

Satellite observations and chemistry-climate model experiments are used to understand the zonal structure of tropical lower stratospheric temperature, water vapor, and ozone trends. The warming in the tropical upper troposphere over the past 30 years is strongest near the Indo-Pacific warm pool, while the warming trend in the western and central Pacific is much weaker. In the lower stratosphere, these trends are reversed: the historical cooling trend is strongest over the Indo-Pacific warm pool and is weakest in the western and central Pacific. These zonal variations are stronger than the zonal-mean response in boreal winter. Targeted experiments with a chemistry-climate model are used to demonstrate that sea surface temperature (hereafter SST) trends are driving the zonal asymmetry in upper tropospheric and lower stratospheric tropical temperature trends. Warming SSTs in the Indian Ocean and in the warm pool region have led to enhanced moist heating in the upper troposphere, and in turn to a Gill-like response that extends into the lower stratosphere. The anomalous circulation has led to zonal structure in the ozone and water vapor trends near the tropopause, and subsequently to less water vapor entering the stratosphere. The radiative impact of these changes in trace gases is smaller than the direct impact of the moist heating. Projected future SSTs appear to drive a temperature and water vapor response whose zonal structure is similar to the historical response. In the lower stratosphere, the changes in water vapor and temperature due to projected future SSTs are of similar strength to, though slightly weaker than, that due directly to projected future CO2, ozone, and methane.

Striking Seasonality in the Secular Warming of the Northern Continents: Structure and Mechanisms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nigam, S.; Thomas, N. P.

2017-12-01

The linear trend in twentieth-century surface air temperature (SAT)—a key secular warming signal— exhibits striking seasonal variations over Northern Hemisphere continents; SAT trends are pronounced in winter and spring but notably weaker in summer and fall. The SAT trends in historical twentieth-century climate simulations informing the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change's Fifth Assessment show varied (and often unrealistic) strength and structure, and markedly weaker seasonal variation. The large intra-ensemble spread of winter SAT trends in some historical simulations was surprising, especially in the context of century-long linear trends, with implications for the detection of the secular warming signal. The striking seasonality of observed secular warming over northern continents warrants an explanation and the representation of related processes in climate models. Here, the seasonality of SAT trends over North America is shown to result from land surface-hydroclimate interactions and, to an extent, also from the secular change in low-level atmospheric circulation and related thermal advection. It is argued that the winter dormancy and summer vigor of the hydrologic cycle over middle- to high-latitude continents permit different responses to the additional incident radiative energy from increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The seasonal cycle of climate, despite its monotony, provides an expanded phase space for the exposition of the dynamical and thermodynamical processes generating secular warming, and an exceptional cost-effective opportunity for benchmarking climate projection models.

The coastal ocean response to the global warming acceleration and hiatus

PubMed Central

Liao, Enhui; Lu, Wenfang; Yan, Xiao-Hai; Jiang, Yuwu; Kidwell, Autumn

2015-01-01

Coastlines are fundamental to humans for habitation, commerce, and natural resources. Many coastal ecosystem disasters, caused by extreme sea surface temperature (SST), were reported when the global climate shifted from global warming to global surface warming hiatus after 1998. The task of understanding the coastal SST variations within the global context is an urgent matter. Our study on the global coastal SST from 1982 to 2013 revealed a significant cooling trend in the low and mid latitudes (31.4% of the global coastlines) after 1998, while 17.9% of the global coastlines changed from a cooling trend to a warming trend concurrently. The trend reversals in the Northern Pacific and Atlantic coincided with the phase shift of Pacific Decadal Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation, respectively. These coastal SST changes are larger than the changes of the global mean and open ocean, resulting in a fast increase of extremely hot/cold days, and thus extremely hot/cold events. Meanwhile, a continuous increase of SST was detected for a considerable portion of coastlines (46.7%) with a strengthened warming along the coastlines in the high northern latitudes. This suggests the warming still continued and strengthened in some regions after 1998, but with a weaker pattern in the low and mid latitudes. PMID:26568024

The coastal ocean response to the global warming acceleration and hiatus.

PubMed

Liao, Enhui; Lu, Wenfang; Yan, Xiao-Hai; Jiang, Yuwu; Kidwell, Autumn

2015-11-16

Coastlines are fundamental to humans for habitation, commerce, and natural resources. Many coastal ecosystem disasters, caused by extreme sea surface temperature (SST), were reported when the global climate shifted from global warming to global surface warming hiatus after 1998. The task of understanding the coastal SST variations within the global context is an urgent matter. Our study on the global coastal SST from 1982 to 2013 revealed a significant cooling trend in the low and mid latitudes (31.4% of the global coastlines) after 1998, while 17.9% of the global coastlines changed from a cooling trend to a warming trend concurrently. The trend reversals in the Northern Pacific and Atlantic coincided with the phase shift of Pacific Decadal Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation, respectively. These coastal SST changes are larger than the changes of the global mean and open ocean, resulting in a fast increase of extremely hot/cold days, and thus extremely hot/cold events. Meanwhile, a continuous increase of SST was detected for a considerable portion of coastlines (46.7%) with a strengthened warming along the coastlines in the high northern latitudes. This suggests the warming still continued and strengthened in some regions after 1998, but with a weaker pattern in the low and mid latitudes.

Delayed warming hiatus over the Tibetan Plateau

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

An, Wenling; Hou, Shugui; Hu, Yongyun; Wu, Shuangye

2017-03-01

A reduction in the warming rate for the global surface temperature since the late 1990s has attracted much attention and caused a great deal of controversy. During the same time period, however, most previous studies have reported enhanced warming over the Tibetan Plateau (TP). In this study we further examined the temperature trend of the TP and surrounding areas based on the homogenized temperature records for the period 1980-2014, we found that for the TP regions lower than 4000 m the warming rate has started to slow down since the late 1990s, a similar pattern consistent with the whole China and the global temperature trend. However, for the TP regions higher than 4000 m, this reduction in warming rate did not occur until the mid-2000s. This delayed warming hiatus could be related to changes in regional radiative, energy, and land surface processes in recent years.

Suppressed midlatitude summer atmospheric warming by Arctic sea ice loss during 1979-2012

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Qigang; Cheng, Luyao; Chan, Duo; Yao, Yonghong; Hu, Haibo; Yao, Ying

2016-03-01

Since the 1980s, rapid Arctic warming, sea ice decline, and weakening summer circulation have coincided with an increasing number of extreme heat waves and other destructive weather events in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) midlatitudes in summer. Recent papers disagree about whether such high-impact events are related to Arctic warming and/or ice loss. Here we use atmospheric model ensemble simulations to attribute effects of sea ice loss and other factors on observed summer climate trends during 1979-2012. The ongoing greenhouse gas buildup and resulting sea surface temperature warming outside the Arctic explains nearly all land warming and a significant portion of observed weakening zonal winds in the NH midlatitudes. However, sea ice loss has induced a negative Arctic Oscillation(AO)-type circulation with significant summer surface and tropospheric cooling trends over large portions of the NH midlatitudes, which reduce the warming and might reduce the probability of regional severe hot summers.

CLIMATE CHANGE. Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus.

PubMed

Karl, Thomas R; Arguez, Anthony; Huang, Boyin; Lawrimore, Jay H; McMahon, James R; Menne, Matthew J; Peterson, Thomas C; Vose, Russell S; Zhang, Huai-Min

2015-06-26

Much study has been devoted to the possible causes of an apparent decrease in the upward trend of global surface temperatures since 1998, a phenomenon that has been dubbed the global warming "hiatus." Here, we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than those reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of a "slowdown" in the increase of global surface temperature. Copyright © 2015, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Indian Ocean warming during 1958-2004 simulated by a climate system model and its mechanism

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dong, Lu; Zhou, Tianjun; Wu, Bo

2014-01-01

The mechanism responsible for Indian Ocean Sea surface temperature (SST) basin-wide warming trend during 1958-2004 is studied based on both observational data analysis and numerical experiments with a climate system model FGOALS-gl. To quantitatively estimate the relative contributions of external forcing (anthropogenic and natural forcing) and internal variability, three sets of numerical experiments are conducted, viz. an all forcing run forced by both anthropogenic forcing (greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols) and natural forcing (solar constant and volcanic aerosols), a natural forcing run driven by only natural forcing, and a pre-industrial control run. The model results are compared to the observations. The results show that the observed warming trend during 1958-2004 (0.5 K (47-year)-1) is largely attributed to the external forcing (more than 90 % of the total trend), while the residual is attributed to the internal variability. Model results indicate that the anthropogenic forcing accounts for approximately 98.8 % contribution of the external forcing trend. Heat budget analysis shows that the surface latent heat flux due to atmosphere and surface longwave radiation, which are mainly associated with anthropogenic forcing, are in favor of the basin-wide warming trend. The basin-wide warming is not spatially uniform, but with an equatorial IOD-like pattern in climate model. The atmospheric processes, oceanic processes and climatological latent heat flux together form an equatorial IOD-like warming pattern, and the oceanic process is the most important in forming the zonal dipole pattern. Both the anthropogenic forcing and natural forcing result in easterly wind anomalies over the equator, which reduce the wind speed, thereby lead to less evaporation and warmer SST in the equatorial western basin. Based on Bjerknes feedback, the easterly wind anomalies uplift the thermocline, which is unfavorable to SST warming in the eastern basin, and contribute to SST warming via deeper thermocline in the western basin. The easterly anomalies also drive westward anomalous equatorial currents, against the eastward climatology currents, which is in favor of the SST warming in the western basin via anomalous warm advection. Therefore, both the atmospheric and oceanic processes are in favor of the IOD-like warming pattern formation over the equator.

The relative contributions of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures and atmospheric internal variability to the recent global warming hiatus

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deser, Clara; Guo, Ruixia; Lehner, Flavio

2017-08-01

The recent slowdown in global mean surface temperature (GMST) warming during boreal winter is examined from a regional perspective using 10-member initial-condition ensembles with two global coupled climate models in which observed tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies (TPAC SSTAs) and radiative forcings are specified. Both models show considerable diversity in their surface air temperature (SAT) trend patterns across the members, attesting to the importance of internal variability beyond the tropical Pacific that is superimposed upon the response to TPAC SSTA and radiative forcing. Only one model shows a close relationship between the realism of its simulated GMST trends and SAT trend patterns. In this model, Eurasian cooling plays a dominant role in determining the GMST trend amplitude, just as in nature. In the most realistic member, intrinsic atmospheric dynamics and teleconnections forced by TPAC SSTA cause cooling over Eurasia (and North America), and contribute equally to its GMST trend.

Model tropical Atlantic biases underpin diminished Pacific decadal variability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McGregor, Shayne; Stuecker, Malte F.; Kajtar, Jules B.; England, Matthew H.; Collins, Mat

2018-06-01

Pacific trade winds have displayed unprecedented strengthening in recent decades1. This strengthening has been associated with east Pacific sea surface cooling2 and the early twenty-first-century slowdown in global surface warming2,3, amongst a host of other substantial impacts4-9. Although some climate models produce the timing of these recently observed trends10, they all fail to produce the trend magnitude2,11,12. This may in part be related to the apparent model underrepresentation of low-frequency Pacific Ocean variability and decadal wind trends2,11-13 or be due to a misrepresentation of a forced response1,14-16 or a combination of both. An increasingly prominent connection between the Pacific and Atlantic basins has been identified as a key driver of this strengthening of the Pacific trade winds12,17-20. Here we use targeted climate model experiments to show that combining the recent Atlantic warming trend with the typical climate model bias leads to a substantially underestimated response for the Pacific Ocean wind and surface temperature. The underestimation largely stems from a reduction and eastward shift of the atmospheric heating response to the tropical Atlantic warming trend. This result suggests that the recent Pacific trends and model decadal variability may be better captured by models with improved mean-state climatologies.

CMIP5 Historical Simulations (1850-2012) with GISS ModelE2

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Miller, Ronald Lindsay; Schmidt, Gavin A.; Nazarenko, Larissa S.; Tausnev, Nick; Bauer, Susanne E.; DelGenio, Anthony D.; Kelley, Max; Lo, Ken K.; Ruedy, Reto; Shindell, Drew T.;

Physical Mechanisms of Rapid Lake Warming

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lenters, J. D.

2016-12-01

Recent studies have shown significant warming of inland water bodies around the world. Many lakes are warming more rapidly than the ambient surface air temperature, and this is counter to what is often expected based on the lake surface energy balance. A host of reasons have been proposed to explain these discrepancies, including changes in the onset of summer stratification, significant loss of ice cover, and concomitant changes in winter air temperature and/or summer cloud cover. A review of the literature suggests that no single physical mechanism is primarily responsible for the majority of these changes, but rather that the large heterogeneity in regional climate trends and lake geomorphometry results in a host of potential physical drivers. In this study, we discuss the variety of mechanisms that have been proposed to explain rapid lake warming and offer an assessment of the physical plausibility for each potential contributor. Lake Superior is presented as a case study to illustrate the "perfect storm" of factors that can cause a deep, dimictic lake to warm at rate that exceeds the rate of global air temperature warming by nearly an order of magnitude. In particular, we use a simple mixed-layer model to show that spatially variable trends in Lake Superior surface water temperature are determined, to first order, by variations in bathymetry and winter air temperature. Summer atmospheric conditions are often of less significance, and winter ice cover may simply be a correlate. The results highlight the importance of considering the full range of factors that can lead to trends in lake surface temperature, and that conventional wisdom may often not be the best guide.

Unabated global surface temperature warming: evaluating the evidence

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karl, T. R.; Arguez, A.

2015-12-01

New insights related to time-dependent bias corrections in global surface temperatures have led to higher rates of warming over the past few decades than previously reported in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014). Record high global temperatures in the past few years have also contributed to larger trends. The combination of these factors and new analyses of the rate of temperature change show unabated global warming since at least the mid-Twentieth Century. New time-dependent bias corrections account for: (1) differences in temperatures measured from ships and drifting buoys; (2) improved corrections to ship measured temperatures; and (3) the larger rates of warming in polar regions (particularly the Arctic). Since 1951, the period over which IPCC (2014) attributes over half of the observed global warming to human causes, it is shown that there has been a remarkably robust and sustained warming, punctuated with inter-annual and decadal variability. This finding is confirmed through simple trend analysis and Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD). Trend analysis however, especially for decadal trends, is sensitive to selection bias of beginning and ending dates. EMD has no selection bias. Additionally, it can highlight both short- and long-term processes affecting the global temperature times series since it addresses both non-linear and non-stationary processes. For the new NOAA global temperature data set, our analyses do not support the notion of a hiatus or slowing of long-term global warming. However, sub-decadal periods of little (or no warming) and rapid warming can also be found, clearly showing the impact of inter-annual and decadal variability that previously has been attributed to both natural and human-induced non-greenhouse forcings.

Suppressed mid-latitude summer atmospheric warming by Arctic sea ice loss during 1979-2012

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Q.

2016-12-01

Since the 1980s, rapid Arctic warming, sea ice decline, and weakening summer circulation have coincided with an increasing number of extreme heatwaves and other destructive weather events in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) mid-latitudes in summer. Recent papers disagree about whether such high-impact events are related to Arctic warming and/or ice loss. Here we use atmospheric model ensemble simulations to attribute effects of sea ice loss and other factors on observed summer climate trends during 1979-2012. The ongoing greenhouse gas buildup and resulting sea surface temperature (SST) warming outside the Arctic explains nearly all land warming and a significant portion of observed weakening zonal winds in the NH mid-latitudes. However, sea ice loss has induced a negative Arctic Oscillation (AO)-type circulation with significant summer surface and tropospheric cooling trends over large portions of the NH mid-latitudes, which reduce the warming and might reduce the probability of regional severe hot summers.

Seasonal and elevational contrasts in temperature trends in Central Chile between 1979 and 2015

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Burger, F.; Brock, B.; Montecinos, A.

2018-03-01

We analyze trends in temperature from 18 temperature stations and one upper air sounding site at 30°-35° S in central Chile between 1979-2015, to explore geographical and season temperature trends and their controls, using regional ocean-atmosphere indices. Significant warming trends are widespread at inland stations, while trends are non-significant or negative at coastal sites, as found in previous studies. However, ubiquitous warming across the region in the past 8 years, suggests the recent period of coastal cooling has ended. Significant warming trends are largely restricted to austral spring, summer and autumn seasons, with very few significant positive or negative trends in winter identified. Autumn warming is notably strong in the Andes, which, together with significant warming in spring, could help to explain the negative mass balance of snow and glaciers in the region. A strong Pacific maritime influence on regional temperature trends is inferred through correlation with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) index and coastal sea surface temperature, but the strength of this influence rapidly diminishes inland, and the majority of valley, and all Andes, sites are independent of the IPO index. Instead, valley and Andes sites, and mid-troposphere temperature in the coastal radiosonde profile, show correlation with the autumn Antarctic Oscillation which, in its current positive phase, promotes subsidence and warming at the latitude of central Chile.

The Footprint of the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation in Indian Ocean Sea Surface Temperatures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dong, Lu; Zhou, Tianjun; Dai, Aiguo; Song, Fengfei; Wu, Bo; Chen, Xiaolong

2016-02-01

Superimposed on a pronounced warming trend, the Indian Ocean (IO) sea surface temperatures (SSTs) also show considerable decadal variations that can cause regional climate oscillations around the IO. However, the mechanisms of the IO decadal variability remain unclear. Here we perform numerical experiments using a state-of-the-art, fully coupled climate model in which the external forcings with or without the observed SSTs in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean (TEP) are applied for 1871-2012. Both the observed timing and magnitude of the IO decadal variations are well reproduced in those experiments with the TEP SSTs prescribed to observations. Although the external forcings account for most of the warming trend, the decadal variability in IO SSTs is dominated by internal variability that is induced by the TEP SSTs, especially the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). The IPO weakens (enhances) the warming of the external forcings by about 50% over the IO during IPO’s cold (warm) phase, which contributes about 10% to the recent global warming hiatus since 1999. The decadal variability in IO SSTs is modulated by the IPO-induced atmospheric adjustment through changing surface heat fluxes, sea surface height and thermocline depth.

The Footprint of the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation in Indian Ocean Sea Surface Temperatures.

PubMed

Dong, Lu; Zhou, Tianjun; Dai, Aiguo; Song, Fengfei; Wu, Bo; Chen, Xiaolong

2016-02-17

Superimposed on a pronounced warming trend, the Indian Ocean (IO) sea surface temperatures (SSTs) also show considerable decadal variations that can cause regional climate oscillations around the IO. However, the mechanisms of the IO decadal variability remain unclear. Here we perform numerical experiments using a state-of-the-art, fully coupled climate model in which the external forcings with or without the observed SSTs in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean (TEP) are applied for 1871-2012. Both the observed timing and magnitude of the IO decadal variations are well reproduced in those experiments with the TEP SSTs prescribed to observations. Although the external forcings account for most of the warming trend, the decadal variability in IO SSTs is dominated by internal variability that is induced by the TEP SSTs, especially the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). The IPO weakens (enhances) the warming of the external forcings by about 50% over the IO during IPO's cold (warm) phase, which contributes about 10% to the recent global warming hiatus since 1999. The decadal variability in IO SSTs is modulated by the IPO-induced atmospheric adjustment through changing surface heat fluxes, sea surface height and thermocline depth.

Simulated versus observed patterns of warming over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere continents during the cold season

PubMed Central

Wallace, John M.; Fu, Qiang; Smoliak, Brian V.; Lin, Pu; Johanson, Celeste M.

2012-01-01

A suite of the historical simulations run with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4) models forced by greenhouse gases, aerosols, stratospheric ozone depletion, and volcanic eruptions and a second suite of simulations forced by increasing CO2 concentrations alone are compared with observations for the reference interval 1965–2000. Surface air temperature trends are disaggregated by boreal cold (November-April) versus warm (May-October) seasons and by high latitude northern (N: 40°–90 °N) versus southern (S: 60 °S–40 °N) domains. A dynamical adjustment is applied to remove the component of the cold-season surface air temperature trends (over land areas poleward of 40 °N) that are attributable to changing atmospheric circulation patterns. The model simulations do not simulate the full extent of the wintertime warming over the high-latitude Northern Hemisphere continents during the later 20th century, much of which was dynamically induced. Expressed as fractions of the concurrent trend in global-mean sea surface temperature, the relative magnitude of the dynamically induced wintertime warming over domain N in the observations, the simulations with multiple forcings, and the runs forced by the buildup of greenhouse gases only is 7∶2∶1, and roughly comparable to the relative magnitude of the concurrent sea-level pressure trends. These results support the notion that the enhanced wintertime warming over high northern latitudes from 1965 to 2000 was mainly a reflection of unforced variability of the coupled climate system. Some of the simulations exhibit an enhancement of the warming along the Arctic coast, suggestive of exaggerated feedbacks. PMID:22847408

Multiple climate regimes in an idealized lake-ice-atmosphere model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sugiyama, Noriyuki; Kravtsov, Sergey; Roebber, Paul

2018-01-01

In recent decades, the Laurentian Great Lakes have undergone rapid surface warming with the summertime trends substantially exceeding the warming rates of surrounding land. Warming of the deepest (Lake Superior) was the strongest, and that of the shallowest (Lake Erie)—the weakest of all lakes. To investigate the dynamics of accelerated lake warming, we considered single-column and multi-column thermodynamic lake-ice models coupled to an idealized two-layer atmosphere. The variable temperature of the upper atmospheric layer—a proxy for the large-scale atmospheric forcing—consisted, in the most general case, of a linear trend mimicking the global warming and atmospheric interannual variability, both on top of the prescribed seasonal cycle of the upper-air temperature. The atmospheric boundary layer of the coupled model exchanged heat with the lake and exhibited lateral diffusive heat transports between the adjacent atmospheric columns. In simpler single-column models, we find that, for a certain range of periodic atmospheric forcing, each lake possesses two stable equilibrium seasonal cycles, which we call "regimes"—with and without lake-ice occurrence in winter and with corresponding cold and warm temperatures in the following summer, respectively, all under an identical seasonally varying external forcing. Deeper lakes exhibit larger differences in their summertime surface water temperature between the warm and cold regimes, due to their larger thermal and dynamical inertia. The regime behavior of multi-column coupled models is similar but more complex, and in some cases, they admit more than two stable equilibrium seasonal cycles, with varying degrees of wintertime ice-cover. The simulated lake response to climate change in the presence of the atmospheric noise rationalizes the observed accelerated warming of the lakes, the correlation between wintertime ice cover and next summer's lake-surface temperature, as well as higher warming trends of the (occasionally wintertime ice-covered) deep-lake vs. shallow-lake regions, in terms of the corresponding characteristics of the forced transitions between colder and warmer lake regimes. Since the regime behavior in our models arises due to nonlinear dynamics rooted in the ice-albedo feedback, this feedback is also the root cause of the accelerated lake warming simulated by these models. In addition, our results imply that if Lake Superior eventually becomes largely ice-free (<10% maximum ice cover every winter) under continuing global warming, the surface warming trends of the deeper regions of the lake will become modest, similar to those of the shallower regions of the lake.

Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year.

PubMed

Steig, Eric J; Schneider, David P; Rutherford, Scott D; Mann, Michael E; Comiso, Josefino C; Shindell, Drew T

2009-01-22

Assessments of Antarctic temperature change have emphasized the contrast between strong warming of the Antarctic Peninsula and slight cooling of the Antarctic continental interior in recent decades. This pattern of temperature change has been attributed to the increased strength of the circumpolar westerlies, largely in response to changes in stratospheric ozone. This picture, however, is substantially incomplete owing to the sparseness and short duration of the observations. Here we show that significant warming extends well beyond the Antarctic Peninsula to cover most of West Antarctica, an area of warming much larger than previously reported. West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1 degrees C per decade over the past 50 years, and is strongest in winter and spring. Although this is partly offset by autumn cooling in East Antarctica, the continent-wide average near-surface temperature trend is positive. Simulations using a general circulation model reproduce the essential features of the spatial pattern and the long-term trend, and we suggest that neither can be attributed directly to increases in the strength of the westerlies. Instead, regional changes in atmospheric circulation and associated changes in sea surface temperature and sea ice are required to explain the enhanced warming in West Antarctica.

Century-Long Warming Trends in the Upper Water Column of Lake Tanganyika.

PubMed

Kraemer, Benjamin M; Hook, Simon; Huttula, Timo; Kotilainen, Pekka; O'Reilly, Catherine M; Peltonen, Anu; Plisnier, Pierre-Denis; Sarvala, Jouko; Tamatamah, Rashid; Vadeboncoeur, Yvonne; Wehrli, Bernhard; McIntyre, Peter B

2015-01-01

Lake Tanganyika, the deepest and most voluminous lake in Africa, has warmed over the last century in response to climate change. Separate analyses of surface warming rates estimated from in situ instruments, satellites, and a paleolimnological temperature proxy (TEX86) disagree, leaving uncertainty about the thermal sensitivity of Lake Tanganyika to climate change. Here, we use a comprehensive database of in situ temperature data from the top 100 meters of the water column that span the lake's seasonal range and lateral extent to demonstrate that long-term temperature trends in Lake Tanganyika depend strongly on depth, season, and latitude. The observed spatiotemporal variation in surface warming rates accounts for small differences between warming rate estimates from in situ instruments and satellite data. However, after accounting for spatiotemporal variation in temperature and warming rates, the TEX86 paleolimnological proxy yields lower surface temperatures (1.46 °C lower on average) and faster warming rates (by a factor of three) than in situ measurements. Based on the ecology of Thaumarchaeota (the microbes whose biomolecules are involved with generating the TEX86 proxy), we offer a reinterpretation of the TEX86 data from Lake Tanganyika as the temperature of the low-oxygen zone, rather than of the lake surface temperature as has been suggested previously. Our analyses provide a thorough accounting of spatiotemporal variation in warming rates, offering strong evidence that thermal and ecological shifts observed in this massive tropical lake over the last century are robust and in step with global climate change.

Dominance of climate warming effects on recent drying trends over wet monsoon regions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Park, Chang-Eui; Jeong, Su-Jong; Ho, Chang-Hoi; Park, Hoonyoung; Piao, Shilong; Kim, Jinwon; Feng, Song

2017-09-01

Understanding changes in background dryness over land is key information for adapting to climate change because of its critical socioeconomic consequences. However, causes of continental dryness changes remain uncertain because various climate parameters control dryness. Here, we verify dominant climate variables determining dryness trends over continental eastern Asia, which is characterized by diverse hydroclimate regimes ranging from arid to humid, by quantifying the relative effects of changes in precipitation, solar radiation, wind speed, surface air temperature, and relative humidity on trends in the aridity index based on observed data from 189 weather stations for the period of 1961-2010. Before the early 1980s (1961-1983), change in precipitation is a primary condition for determining aridity trends. In the later period (1984-2010), the dominant climate parameter for aridity trends varies according to the hydroclimate regime. Drying trends in arid regions are mostly explained by reduced precipitation. In contrast, the increase in potential evapotranspiration due to increased atmospheric water-holding capacity, a secondary impact of warming, works to increase aridity over the humid monsoon region despite an enhanced water supply and relatively less warming. Our results show significant drying effects of warming over the humid monsoon region in recent decades; this also supports the drying trends over warm and water-sufficient regions in future climate.

Century-Long Warming Trends in the Upper Water Column of Lake Tanganyika

PubMed Central

Kraemer, Benjamin M.; Hook, Simon; Huttula, Timo; Kotilainen, Pekka; O’Reilly, Catherine M.; Peltonen, Anu; Plisnier, Pierre-Denis; Sarvala, Jouko; Tamatamah, Rashid; Vadeboncoeur, Yvonne; Wehrli, Bernhard; McIntyre, Peter B.

2015-01-01

Lake Tanganyika, the deepest and most voluminous lake in Africa, has warmed over the last century in response to climate change. Separate analyses of surface warming rates estimated from in situ instruments, satellites, and a paleolimnological temperature proxy (TEX86) disagree, leaving uncertainty about the thermal sensitivity of Lake Tanganyika to climate change. Here, we use a comprehensive database of in situ temperature data from the top 100 meters of the water column that span the lake’s seasonal range and lateral extent to demonstrate that long-term temperature trends in Lake Tanganyika depend strongly on depth, season, and latitude. The observed spatiotemporal variation in surface warming rates accounts for small differences between warming rate estimates from in situ instruments and satellite data. However, after accounting for spatiotemporal variation in temperature and warming rates, the TEX86 paleolimnological proxy yields lower surface temperatures (1.46 °C lower on average) and faster warming rates (by a factor of three) than in situ measurements. Based on the ecology of Thaumarchaeota (the microbes whose biomolecules are involved with generating the TEX86 proxy), we offer a reinterpretation of the TEX86 data from Lake Tanganyika as the temperature of the low-oxygen zone, rather than of the lake surface temperature as has been suggested previously. Our analyses provide a thorough accounting of spatiotemporal variation in warming rates, offering strong evidence that thermal and ecological shifts observed in this massive tropical lake over the last century are robust and in step with global climate change. PMID:26147964

The footprint of the inter-decadal Pacific oscillation in Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dong, Lu; Zhou, Tianjun; Dai, Aiguo

Superimposed on a pronounced warming trend, the Indian Ocean (IO) sea surface temperatures (SSTs) also show considerable decadal variations that can cause regional climate oscillations around the IO. However, the mechanisms of the IO decadal variability remain unclear. Here we perform numerical experiments using a state-of-the-art, fully coupled climate model in which the external forcings with or without the observed SSTs in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean (TEP) are applied for 1871–2012. Both the observed timing and magnitude of the IO decadal variations are well reproduced in those experiments with the TEP SSTs prescribed to observations. Although the external forcingsmore » account for most of the warming trend, the decadal variability in IO SSTs is dominated by internal variability that is induced by the TEP SSTs, especially the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). The IPO weakens (enhances) the warming of the external forcings by about 50% over the IO during IPO’s cold (warm) phase, which contributes about 10% to the recent global warming hiatus since 1999. As a result, the decadal variability in IO SSTs is modulated by the IPO-induced atmospheric adjustment through changing surface heat fluxes, sea surface height and thermocline depth.« less

The footprint of the inter-decadal Pacific oscillation in Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures

DOE PAGES

Dong, Lu; Zhou, Tianjun; Dai, Aiguo; ...

2016-02-17

Superimposed on a pronounced warming trend, the Indian Ocean (IO) sea surface temperatures (SSTs) also show considerable decadal variations that can cause regional climate oscillations around the IO. However, the mechanisms of the IO decadal variability remain unclear. Here we perform numerical experiments using a state-of-the-art, fully coupled climate model in which the external forcings with or without the observed SSTs in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean (TEP) are applied for 1871–2012. Both the observed timing and magnitude of the IO decadal variations are well reproduced in those experiments with the TEP SSTs prescribed to observations. Although the external forcingsmore » account for most of the warming trend, the decadal variability in IO SSTs is dominated by internal variability that is induced by the TEP SSTs, especially the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). The IPO weakens (enhances) the warming of the external forcings by about 50% over the IO during IPO’s cold (warm) phase, which contributes about 10% to the recent global warming hiatus since 1999. As a result, the decadal variability in IO SSTs is modulated by the IPO-induced atmospheric adjustment through changing surface heat fluxes, sea surface height and thermocline depth.« less

Interhemispheric SST gradient trends in the Indian Ocean prior to and during the recent global warming hiatus

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dong, L.; McPhaden, M. J.

2016-12-01

Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have been rising for decades in the Indian Ocean in response to greenhouse gas forcing. However, in this study we show that during the recent hiatus in global warming, a striking interhemispheric gradient in Indian Ocean SST trends developed around 2000, with relatively weak or little warming to the north of 10°S and accelerated warming to the south of 10oS. We present evidence from a wide variety of data sources that this interhemispheric gradient in SST trends is forced primarily by an increase of Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) transport from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean induced by stronger Pacific trade winds. This increased transport led to a depression of the thermocline that facilitated SST warming presumably through a reduction in the vertical turbulent transport of heat in the southern Indian Ocean. Surface wind changes in the Indian Ocean linked to the enhanced Walker circulation also may have contributed to thermocline depth variations and associated SST changes, with downwelling favorable wind stress curls between 10oS and 20oS and upwelling favorable wind stress curls between the equator and 10oS. In addition, the anomalous southwesterly wind stresses off the coast of Somalia favored intensified coastal upwelling and off-shore advection of upwelled water, which would have led to reduced warming of the northern Indian Ocean. Though highly uncertain, lateral heat advection associated with the ITF and surface heat fluxes may also have played a role in forming the interhemispheric SST gradient change.

Data-driven modeling of surface temperature anomaly and solar activity trends

USGS Publications Warehouse

Friedel, Michael J.

2012-01-01

A novel two-step modeling scheme is used to reconstruct and analyze surface temperature and solar activity data at global, hemispheric, and regional scales. First, the self-organizing map (SOM) technique is used to extend annual modern climate data from the century to millennial scale. The SOM component planes are used to identify and quantify strength of nonlinear relations among modern surface temperature anomalies (<150 years), tropical and extratropical teleconnections, and Palmer Drought Severity Indices (0–2000 years). Cross-validation of global sea and land surface temperature anomalies verifies that the SOM is an unbiased estimator with less uncertainty than the magnitude of anomalies. Second, the quantile modeling of SOM reconstructions reveal trends and periods in surface temperature anomaly and solar activity whose timing agrees with published studies. Temporal features in surface temperature anomalies, such as the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, and Modern Warming Period, appear at all spatial scales but whose magnitudes increase when moving from ocean to land, from global to regional scales, and from southern to northern regions. Some caveats that apply when interpreting these data are the high-frequency filtering of climate signals based on quantile model selection and increased uncertainty when paleoclimatic data are limited. Even so, all models find the rate and magnitude of Modern Warming Period anomalies to be greater than those during the Medieval Warm Period. Lastly, quantile trends among reconstructed equatorial Pacific temperature profiles support the recent assertion of two primary El Niño Southern Oscillation types. These results demonstrate the efficacy of this alternative modeling approach for reconstructing and interpreting scale-dependent climate variables.

Emerging Vibrio risk at high latitudes in response to ocean warming

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baker-Austin, Craig; Trinanes, Joaquin A.; Taylor, Nick G. H.; Hartnell, Rachel; Siitonen, Anja; Martinez-Urtaza, Jaime

2013-01-01

There is increasing concern regarding the role of climate change in driving bacterial waterborne infectious diseases. Here we illustrate associations between environmental changes observed in the Baltic area and the recent emergence of Vibrio infections and also forecast future scenarios of the risk of infections in correspondence with predicted warming trends. Using multidecadal long-term sea surface temperature data sets we found that the Baltic Sea is warming at an unprecedented rate. Sea surface temperature trends (1982-2010) indicate a warming pattern of 0.063-0.078°Cyr-1 (6.3-7.8°C per century; refs , ), with recent peak temperatures unequalled in the history of instrumented measurements for this region. These warming patterns have coincided with the unexpected emergence of Vibrio infections in northern Europe, many clustered around the Baltic Sea area. The number and distribution of cases correspond closely with the temporal and spatial peaks in sea surface temperatures. This is among the first empirical evidence that anthropogenic climate change is driving the emergence of Vibrio disease in temperate regions through its impact on resident bacterial communities, implying that this process is reshaping the distribution of infectious diseases across global scales.

Global Surface Temperature Anomalies and Attribution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pietrafesa, L. J.

2017-12-01

We study Non-Stationary, Non-Linear time series of global surface temperatures from 1850 to 2016, and via an empirical, mathematical methodology, we reveal the buried, internal modes of variability of planetary temperatures over the past 167 years, and find periods of cooling and warming, both in the ocean and the atmosphere over land, with multiple modes of variability; seasonal, annual, inter-annual, multi-year, decadal, multi-decadal, centennial and overall warming trends in the ocean, atmosphere and the combination therein. The oceanic rate of warming is less than two thirds of that of the atmosphere. While our findings on overall trends of fossil fuel burning and planetary temperatures are only visually correlative, by employing a mathematical methodology well known in ergonomics, this study causally links the upward rise in planetary surface temperature from the latter part of the 19th Century and into the 21st Century, to the contemporaneous upward rise in fossil fuel burning and suggests that if present fossil fuel burning is not curtailed there will be continued warming of the planet in the future.

Trends in Surface Temperature at High Latitudes

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Comiso, Josefino C.

2012-01-01

The earliest signal of a climate change is expected to be found in the polar regions where warming is expected to be amplified on account of ice-albedo feedbacks associated with the high reflectivity of snow and ice. Because of general inaccessibility, there is a general paucity of in situ data and hence the need to use satellite data to observe the large-scale variability and trends in surface temperature in the region. Among the most important sensors for monitoring surface temperature has been the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) which was first launched in 1978 and has provided continuous thermal infrared data since 1981. The top of the atmosphere data are converted to surface temperature data through various schemes that accounts for the unique atmospheric and surface conditions in the polar regions. Among the highest source of error in the data is cloud masking which is made more difficult in the polar region because of similar Signatures of clouds and snow lice covered areas. The availability of many more channels in the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) launched on board Terra satellite in December 1999 and on board Aqua in May 2002 (e.g., 36 visible and infrared channels compared to 5 for AVHRR) made it possible to minimize the error. Further capabilities were introduced with the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) which has the appropriate frequency channels for the retrieval of sea surface temperature (SST). The results of analysis of the data show an amplified warming in the Arctic region, compared with global warming. The spatial distribution of warming is, however, not uniform and during the last 3 decades, positive temperature anomalies have been most pronounced in North America, Greenland and the Arctic basin. Some regions of the Arctic such as Siberia and the Bering Sea surprisingly show moderate cooling but this may be because these regions were anomalously warm in the 1980s when the satellite record started. Also, the SST in the Arctic basin is observed to be anomalously high in 2007 when the perennial ice cover declined dramatically to its lowest extent. In the Antarctic, surface temperature trends are much more moderate with the most positive trends occurring in the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of Western Antarctica while some cooling are observed in the Antarctic Plateau and the Ross Sea. The trends in SST in the region is similar to global averages but precipitation from more evaporation may have a key role in the spatial distribution of surface temperature in the ice covered region

Recent Warming of Lake Kivu

PubMed Central

Katsev, Sergei; Aaberg, Arthur A.; Crowe, Sean A.; Hecky, Robert E.

2014-01-01

Lake Kivu in East Africa has gained notoriety for its prodigious amounts of dissolved methane and dangers of limnic eruption. Being meromictic, it is also expected to accumulate heat due to rising regional air temperatures. To investigate the warming trend and distinguish between atmospheric and geothermal heating sources, we compiled historical temperature data, performed measurements with logging instruments, and simulated heat propagation. We also performed isotopic analyses of water from the lake's main basin and isolated Kabuno Bay. The results reveal that the lake surface is warming at the rate of 0.12°C per decade, which matches the warming rates in other East African lakes. Temperatures increase throughout the entire water column. Though warming is strongest near the surface, warming rates in the deep waters cannot be accounted for solely by propagation of atmospheric heat at presently assumed rates of vertical mixing. Unless the transport rates are significantly higher than presently believed, this indicates significant contributions from subterranean heat sources. Temperature time series in the deep monimolimnion suggest evidence of convection. The progressive deepening of the depth of temperature minimum in the water column is expected to accelerate the warming in deeper waters. The warming trend, however, is unlikely to strongly affect the physical stability of the lake, which depends primarily on salinity gradient. PMID:25295730

Recent warming of lake Kivu.

PubMed

Katsev, Sergei; Aaberg, Arthur A; Crowe, Sean A; Hecky, Robert E

2014-01-01

Lake Kivu in East Africa has gained notoriety for its prodigious amounts of dissolved methane and dangers of limnic eruption. Being meromictic, it is also expected to accumulate heat due to rising regional air temperatures. To investigate the warming trend and distinguish between atmospheric and geothermal heating sources, we compiled historical temperature data, performed measurements with logging instruments, and simulated heat propagation. We also performed isotopic analyses of water from the lake's main basin and isolated Kabuno Bay. The results reveal that the lake surface is warming at the rate of 0.12°C per decade, which matches the warming rates in other East African lakes. Temperatures increase throughout the entire water column. Though warming is strongest near the surface, warming rates in the deep waters cannot be accounted for solely by propagation of atmospheric heat at presently assumed rates of vertical mixing. Unless the transport rates are significantly higher than presently believed, this indicates significant contributions from subterranean heat sources. Temperature time series in the deep monimolimnion suggest evidence of convection. The progressive deepening of the depth of temperature minimum in the water column is expected to accelerate the warming in deeper waters. The warming trend, however, is unlikely to strongly affect the physical stability of the lake, which depends primarily on salinity gradient.

Decadal trends of the upper ocean salinity in the tropical Indo-Pacific since mid-1990s

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

DU, Y.; Zhang, Y.

2016-02-01

A contrasting trend pattern of sea surface salinity (SSS) between the western tropical Pacific (WTP) and the southeastern tropical Indian Ocean (SETIO) is observed during 2004-2013, with significant salinity increase in the WTP and freshening in the SETIO. In this study, we show that increased precipitation around the Maritime Continent (MC), decreased precipitation in the western-central tropical Pacific, and ocean advection processes contribute to the salinity trends in the region. From a longer historical record, these salinity trends started in the mid-1990s, a few years before the Global Warming Hiatus from 1998 to present. The salinity trends are associated a strengthening trend of the Walker Circulation over the tropical Indo-Pacific, which have reversed the long-term salinity changes in the tropical Indo-Pacific as a consequence of global warming. Understanding decadal variations of SSS in the tropical Indo-Pacific will better inform on how the tropical hydrological cycle will be affected by the natural variability and a warming climate.

Decadal trends of the upper ocean salinity in the tropical Indo-Pacific since mid-1990s

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Du, Yan; Zhang, Yuhong; Feng, Ming; Wang, Tianyu; Zhang, Ningning; Wijffels, Susan

2015-11-01

A contrasting trend pattern of sea surface salinity (SSS) between the western tropical Pacific (WTP) and the southeastern tropical Indian Ocean (SETIO) is observed during 2004-2013, with significant salinity increase in the WTP and freshening in the SETIO. In this study, we show that increased precipitation around the Maritime Continent (MC), decreased precipitation in the western-central tropical Pacific, and ocean advection processes contribute to the salinity trends in the region. From a longer historical record, these salinity trends started in the mid-1990s, a few years before the Global Warming Hiatus from 1998 to present. The salinity trends are associated a strengthening trend of the Walker Circulation over the tropical Indo-Pacific, which have reversed the long-term salinity changes in the tropical Indo-Pacific as a consequence of global warming. Understanding decadal variations of SSS in the tropical Indo-Pacific will better inform on how the tropical hydrological cycle will be affected by the natural variability and a warming climate.

Decadal trends of the upper ocean salinity in the tropical Indo-Pacific since mid-1990s

PubMed Central

Du, Yan; Zhang, Yuhong; Feng, Ming; Wang, Tianyu; Zhang, Ningning; Wijffels, Susan

2015-01-01

A contrasting trend pattern of sea surface salinity (SSS) between the western tropical Pacific (WTP) and the southeastern tropical Indian Ocean (SETIO) is observed during 2004–2013, with significant salinity increase in the WTP and freshening in the SETIO. In this study, we show that increased precipitation around the Maritime Continent (MC), decreased precipitation in the western-central tropical Pacific, and ocean advection processes contribute to the salinity trends in the region. From a longer historical record, these salinity trends started in the mid-1990s, a few years before the Global Warming Hiatus from 1998 to present. The salinity trends are associated a strengthening trend of the Walker Circulation over the tropical Indo-Pacific, which have reversed the long-term salinity changes in the tropical Indo-Pacific as a consequence of global warming. Understanding decadal variations of SSS in the tropical Indo-Pacific will better inform on how the tropical hydrological cycle will be affected by the natural variability and a warming climate. PMID:26522168

Decadal trends of the upper ocean salinity in the tropical Indo-Pacific since mid-1990s.

PubMed

Du, Yan; Zhang, Yuhong; Feng, Ming; Wang, Tianyu; Zhang, Ningning; Wijffels, Susan

2015-11-02

A contrasting trend pattern of sea surface salinity (SSS) between the western tropical Pacific (WTP) and the southeastern tropical Indian Ocean (SETIO) is observed during 2004-2013, with significant salinity increase in the WTP and freshening in the SETIO. In this study, we show that increased precipitation around the Maritime Continent (MC), decreased precipitation in the western-central tropical Pacific, and ocean advection processes contribute to the salinity trends in the region. From a longer historical record, these salinity trends started in the mid-1990s, a few years before the Global Warming Hiatus from 1998 to present. The salinity trends are associated a strengthening trend of the Walker Circulation over the tropical Indo-Pacific, which have reversed the long-term salinity changes in the tropical Indo-Pacific as a consequence of global warming. Understanding decadal variations of SSS in the tropical Indo-Pacific will better inform on how the tropical hydrological cycle will be affected by the natural variability and a warming climate.

Northern Galápagos Corals Reveal Twentieth Century Warming in the Eastern Tropical Pacific

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jimenez, Gloria; Cole, Julia E.; Thompson, Diane M.; Tudhope, Alexander W.

2018-02-01

Models and observations disagree regarding sea surface temperature (SST) trends in the eastern tropical Pacific. We present a new Sr/Ca-SST record that spans 1940-2010 from two Wolf Island corals (northern Galápagos). Trend analysis of the Wolf record shows significant warming on multiple timescales, which is also present in several other records and gridded instrumental products. Together, these data sets suggest that most of the eastern tropical Pacific has warmed over the twentieth century. In contrast, recent decades have been characterized by warming during boreal spring and summer (especially north of the equator), and subtropical cooling during boreal fall and winter (especially south of the equator). These SST trends are consistent with the effects of radiative forcing, mitigated by cooling due to wind forcing during boreal winter, as well as intensified upwelling and a strengthened Equatorial Undercurrent.

Trends in 1970-2010 southern California surface maximum temperatures: extremes and heat waves

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ghebreegziabher, Amanuel T.

Daily maximum temperatures from 1970-2010 were obtained from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) for 28 South Coast Air Basin (SoCAB) Cooperative Network (COOP) sites. Analyses were carried out on the entire data set, as well as on the 1970-1974 and 2006-2010 sub-periods, including construction of spatial distributions and time-series trends of both summer-average and annual-maximum values and of the frequency of two and four consecutive "daytime" heat wave events. Spatial patterns of average and extreme values showed three areas consistent with climatological SoCAB flow patterns: cold coastal, warm inland low-elevation, and cool further-inland mountain top. Difference (2006-2010 minus 1970-1974) distributions of both average and extreme-value trends were consistent with the shorter period (1970-2005) study of previous study, as they showed the expected inland regional warming and a "reverse-reaction" cooling in low elevation coastal and inland areas open to increasing sea breeze flows. Annual-extreme trends generally showed cooling at sites below 600 m and warming at higher elevations. As the warming trends of the extremes were larger than those of the averages, regional warming thus impacts extremes more than averages. Spatial distributions of hot-day frequencies showed expected maximum at inland low-elevation sites. Regional warming again thus induced increases at both elevated-coastal areas, but low-elevation areas showed reverse-reaction decreases.

Icehouse Effect: A Polar Autumn and Winter Cooling Trend

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wetzel, Peter J.

1999-01-01

The icehouse effect is a hypothesized polar climate trend toward cooling (or lack of warming) in response to greenhouse warming of adjacent lower latitudes. When greenhouse warmed air from lower latitudes moves over ice and snow, it generates a stronger, more stable, cappino, inversion than in a parallel case without greenhouse warming. Because the degree of decoupling between vertically adjacent air masses is directly dependent on the strength of the inversion, the capping inversion acts somewhat analogously to the walls and roof of the icehouse of generations past. What is inside the icehouse, namely the cold polar atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) air, is preserved by the "insulation" or decoupling, provided by the warm air aloft. Observations over the Arctic Ocean have shown an unexpected lack of any detectable surface warming trend over the past 40 years. This finding strongly contradicts climate model predictions that polar regions should show the strongest effect of greenhouse warming. It also stands in contrast to the consensus reached by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that human caused greenhouse warming is now detectable globally. One might ask: Are these Arctic observations wrong? Or, if right, is there a plausible physical explanation for them? The published observations mentioned above used about 50,000 soundings over the Arctic Ocean. Here I present a novel analysis of ALL available Arctic rawinsonde data north of 65N--a total of more than 1.1 million soundings. The analysis confirms the previously published result: There is indeed a slight climate-cooling trend in the vast majority of the data. Importantly, there are also select conditions (very strong and very weak stability of the ABL) which show a consistent, strong Arctic warming trend. It is the juxtaposition of these warming and cooling trends which defines a unique "icehouse signature" for which an explanation can be sought.

A remarkable climate warming hiatus over Northeast China since 1998

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sun, Xiubao; Ren, Guoyu; Ren, Yuyu; Fang, Yihe; Liu, Yulian; Xue, Xiaoying; Zhang, Panfeng

2017-07-01

Characteristics and causes of global warming hiatus (GWH) phenomenon have received much attention in recent years. Monthly mean data of land surface air maximum temperature (Tmax), minimum temperature (Tmin), and mean temperature (Tmean) of 118 national stations since 1951 in Northeast China are used in this paper to analyze the changes of land surface air temperature in recent 64 years with an emphasis on the GWH period. The results show that (1) from 1951 to 2014, the warming trends of Tmax, Tmin, and Tmean are 0.20, 0.42, and 0.34 °C/decade respectively for the whole area, with the warming rate of Tmin about two times of Tmax, and the upward trend of Tmean obviously higher than mainland China and global averages; (2) in the period 1998-2014, the annual mean temperature consistently exhibits a cooling phenomenon in Northeast China, and the trends of Tmax, Tmin, and Tmean are -0.36, -0.14, and -0.28 °C/decade respectively; (3) in the GWH period, seasonal mean cooling mainly occurs in northern winter (DJF) and spring (MAM), but northern summer (JJA) and autumn (SON) still experience a warming, implying that the annual mean temperature decrease is controlled by the remarkable cooling of winter and spring; (4) compared to the global and mainland China averages, the hiatus phenomenon is more evident in Northeast China, and the cooling trends are more obvious in the cold season; (5) the Northeast China cooling trend occurs under the circulation background of the negative phase Arctic Oscillation (AO), and it is also closely related to strengthening of the Siberia High (SH) and the East Asian Trough (EAT), and the stronger East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) over the GWH period.

Mechanistic Lake Modeling to Understand and Predict Heterogeneous Responses to Climate Warming

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Read, J. S.; Winslow, L. A.; Rose, K. C.; Hansen, G. J.

2016-12-01

Substantial warming has been documented for of hundreds globally distributed lakes, with likely impacts on ecosystem processes. Despite a clear pattern of widespread warming, thermal responses of individual lakes to climate change are often heterogeneous, with the warming rates of neighboring lakes varying across depths and among seasons. We aggregated temperature observations and parameterized mechanistic models for 9,000 lakes in the U.S. states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan to examine broad-scale lake warming trends and among-lake diversity. Daily lake temperature profiles and ice-cover dynamics were simulated using the General Lake Model for the contemporary period (1979-2015) using drivers from the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS-2) and for contemporary and future periods (1980-2100) using downscaled data from six global circulation models driven by the Representative Climate Pathway 8.5 scenario. For the contemporary period, modeled vs observed summer mean surface temperatures had a root mean squared error of 0.98°C with modeled warming trends similar to observed trends. Future simulations under the extreme 8.5 scenario predicted a median lake summer surface warming rate of 0.57°C/decade until mid-century, with slower rates in the later half of the 21st century (0.35°C/decade). Modeling scenarios and analysis of field data suggest that the lake-specific properties of size, water clarity, and depth are strong controls on the sensitivity of lakes to climate change. For example, a simulated 1% annual decline in water clarity was sufficient to override the effects of climate warming on whole lake water temperatures in some - but not all - study lakes. Understanding heterogeneous lake responses to climate variability can help identify lake-specific features that influence resilience to climate change.

Observed high-altitude warming and snow cover retreat over Tibet and the Himalayas enhanced by black carbon aerosols

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Xu, Y.; Ramanathan, V.; Washington, W. M.

Himalayan mountain glaciers and the snowpack over the Tibetan Plateau provide the headwater of several major rivers in Asia. In situ observations of snow cover extent since the 1960s suggest that the snowpack in the region have retreated significantly, accompanied by a surface warming of 2–2.5°C observed over the peak altitudes (5000 m). Using a high-resolution ocean–atmosphere global climate model and an observationally constrained black carbon (BC) aerosol forcing, we attribute the observed altitude dependence of the warming trends as well as the spatial pattern of reductions in snow depths and snow cover extent to various anthropogenic factors. At themore » Tibetan Plateau altitudes, the increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentration exerted a warming of 1.7°C, BC 1.3°C where as cooling aerosols cause about 0.7°C cooling, bringing the net simulated warming consistent with the anomalously large observed warming. We therefore conclude that BC together with CO 2 has contributed to the snow retreat trends. In particular, BC increase is the major factor in the strong elevation dependence of the observed surface warming. The atmospheric warming by BC as well as its surface darkening of snow is coupled with the positive snow albedo feedbacks to account for the disproportionately large role of BC in high-elevation regions. Here, these findings reveal that BC impact needs to be properly accounted for in future regional climate projections, in particular on high-altitude cryosphere.« less

Observed high-altitude warming and snow cover retreat over Tibet and the Himalayas enhanced by black carbon aerosols

DOE PAGES

Xu, Y.; Ramanathan, V.; Washington, W. M.

2016-02-05

Himalayan mountain glaciers and the snowpack over the Tibetan Plateau provide the headwater of several major rivers in Asia. In situ observations of snow cover extent since the 1960s suggest that the snowpack in the region have retreated significantly, accompanied by a surface warming of 2–2.5°C observed over the peak altitudes (5000 m). Using a high-resolution ocean–atmosphere global climate model and an observationally constrained black carbon (BC) aerosol forcing, we attribute the observed altitude dependence of the warming trends as well as the spatial pattern of reductions in snow depths and snow cover extent to various anthropogenic factors. At themore » Tibetan Plateau altitudes, the increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentration exerted a warming of 1.7°C, BC 1.3°C where as cooling aerosols cause about 0.7°C cooling, bringing the net simulated warming consistent with the anomalously large observed warming. We therefore conclude that BC together with CO 2 has contributed to the snow retreat trends. In particular, BC increase is the major factor in the strong elevation dependence of the observed surface warming. The atmospheric warming by BC as well as its surface darkening of snow is coupled with the positive snow albedo feedbacks to account for the disproportionately large role of BC in high-elevation regions. Here, these findings reveal that BC impact needs to be properly accounted for in future regional climate projections, in particular on high-altitude cryosphere.« less

Spatial patterns of Antarctic surface temperature trends in the context of natural variability: Lessons from the CMIP5 Models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, K. L.; Polvani, L. M.

2015-12-01

The recent annually averaged warming of the Antarctic Peninsula, and of West Antarctica, stands in stark contrast to very small and weakly negative trends over East Antarctica. This asymmetry arises primarily from a highly significant warming of West Antarctica in austral spring and a strong cooling of East Antarctic in austral autumn. Here we examine whether this East-West asymmetry is a response to anthropogenic climate forcings or a manifestation of natural climate variability. We compare the observed Antarctic surface air temperature (SAT) trends from five temperature reconstructions over two distinct time periods (1979-2005 and 1960-2005), and with those simulated by 40 coupled models participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. We find that the observed East-West asymmetry differs substantially over the two time periods and, furthermore, is completely absent from the CMIP5 multi-model mean (from which all natural variability is eliminated by the averaging). We compare the CMIP5 SAT trends to those of 29 historical atmosphere-only simulations with prescribed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and sea ice and find that these simulations are in better agreement with the observations. This suggests that natural multi-decadal variability associated with SSTs and sea ice and not external forcings is the primary driver of Antarctic SAT trends. We confirm this by showing that the observed trends lie within the distribution of multi-decadal trends from the CMIP5 pre-industrial integrations. These results, therefore, offer new evidence which points to natural climate variability as the more likely cause of the recent warming of West Antarctica and of the Peninsula.

Role of Stratospheric Water Vapor in Global Warming from GCM Simulations Constrained by MLS Observation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Y.; Stek, P. C.; Su, H.; Jiang, J. H.; Livesey, N. J.; Santee, M. L.

2014-12-01

Over the past century, global average surface temperature has warmed by about 0.16°C/decade, largely due to anthropogenic increases in well-mixed greenhouse gases. However, the trend in global surface temperatures has been nearly flat since 2000, raising a question regarding the exploration of the drivers of climate change. Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Previous studies suggested that the sudden decrease of stratospheric water vapor (SWV) around 2000 may have contributed to the stall of global warming. Since 2004, the SWV observed by Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) on Aura satellite has shown a slow recovery. The role of recent SWV variations in global warming has not been quantified. We employ a coupled atmosphere-ocean climate model, the NCAR CESM, to address this issue. It is found that the CESM underestimates the stratospheric water vapor by about 1 ppmv due to limited representations of the stratospheric dynamic and chemical processes important for water vapor variabilities. By nudging the modeled SWV to the MLS observation, we find that increasing SWV by 1 ppmv produces a robust surface warming about 0.2°C in global-mean when the model reaches equilibrium. Conversely, the sudden drop of SWV from 2000 to 2004 would cause a surface cooling about -0.08°C in global-mean. On the other hand, imposing the observed linear trend of SWV based on the 10-year observation of MLS in the CESM yields a rather slow surface warming, about 0.04°C/decade. Our model experiments suggest that SWV contributes positively to the global surface temperature variation, although it may not be the dominant factor that drives the recent global warming hiatus. Additional sensitivity experiments show that the impact of SWV on surface climate is mostly governed by the SWV amount at 100 hPa in the tropics. Furthermore, the atmospheric model simulations driven by observed sea surface temperature (SST) show that the inter-annual variation of SWV follows that of SST, suggesting a close coupling between surface temperature and SWV.

Growing importance of atmospheric water demands on the hydrologcial condition of East Asia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Park, C. E.; Ho, C. H.; Jeong, S. J.; Park, H.

2015-12-01

As global temperature increases, enhanced exchange of fresh water between the surface and atmosphere expected to make dry regions drier and wet regions wetter. This concept is well fitted for the ocean, but oversimplified for the land. How the climate change causes the complex patterns of the continental dryness change is one of challenging questions. Here we investigate the observed dryness changes of the land surface by examining the quantitative influence of several climate parameters on the background aridity changes over East Asia, containing various climate regimes from cold-arid to warm-humid regions, using observations of 189 stations covering the period from 1961 to 2010. Overall mean aridity trend is changed from negative to positive around early 1990s. The turning of dryness trend is largely influenced by sharp increase in atmospheric water demands, regardless of the background climate. The warming induced increase in water demands is larger in warm-humid regions than in cold-arid region due to the Clausius-Clapeyron relation between air temperature and saturation vapor pressure. The results show the drying of anthropogenic warming already begins and influences on the patterns of dryness change over the land surface.

Understanding the causes of recent warming of mediterranean waters. How much could be attributed to climate change?

PubMed

Macias, Diego; Garcia-Gorriz, Elisa; Stips, Adolf

2013-01-01

During the past two decades, Mediterranean waters have been warming at a rather high rate resulting in scientific and social concern. This warming trend is observed in satellite data, field data and model simulations, and affects both surface and deep waters throughout the Mediterranean basin. However, the warming rate is regionally different and seems to change with time, which has led to the question of what causes underlie the observed trends. Here, we analyze available satellite information on sea surface temperature (SST) from the last 25 years using spectral techniques and find that more than half of the warming tendency during this period is due to a non-linear, wave-like tendency. Using a state of the art hydrodynamic model, we perform a hindcast simulation and obtain the simulated SST evolution of the Mediterranean basin for the last 52 years. These SST results show a clear sinusoidal tendency that follows the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) during the simulation period. Our results reveal that 58% of recent warming in Mediterranean waters could be attributed to this AMO-like oscillation, being anthropogenic-induced climate change only responsible for 42% of total trend. The observed acceleration of water warming during the 1990s therefore appears to be caused by a superimposition of anthropogenic-induced warming with the positive phase of the AMO, while the recent slowdown of this tendency is likely due to a shift in the AMO phase. It has been proposed that this change in the AMO phase will mask the effect of global warming in the forthcoming decades, and our results indicate that the same could also be applicable to the Mediterranean Sea. Henceforth, natural multidecadal temperature oscillations should be taken into account to avoid underestimation of the anthropogenic-induced warming of the Mediterranean basin in the future.

Seasonality of coastal upwelling trends under future warming scenarios along the southern limit of the canary upwelling system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sousa, Magda Catarina; Alvarez, Ines; deCastro, Maite; Gomez-Gesteira, Moncho; Dias, João Miguel

2017-04-01

The Canary Upwelling Ecosystem (CUE) is one of the four most important upwelling sites around the world in terms of primary production, with coastal upwelling mostly a year-round phenomenon south of 30°N. Based on annual future projections, several previous studies indicated that global warming will intensify coastal upwelling in the northern region and will induce its weakening at the southernmost latitudes. However, analysis of historical data, showed that coastal upwelling depends on the length of the time series, the season, and even the database used. Thus, despite previous efforts, an overall detailed description of seasonal upwelling trends and their effects on sea surface temperature (SST) along the Canary coast over the 21st century remains unclear. To address this issue, several regional and global wind and SST climate models from CORDEX and CMIP5 projects for the period 1976-2099 were analyzed. This research provides new insights about coastal upwelling trends under future warming scenarios for the CUE, with results showing opposite patterns for upwelling index (UI) trends depending on the season. A weakening of the UI occurs from May to August all along the coast, whereas it increases from October to April. Analysis of SST trends reveals a general warming throughout the area, although the warming rate is considerably lower near the shore than at open ocean locations due to coastal upwelling effects. In addition, SST projections show higher warming rates from May to August than from October to April in response to the future decreasing trend in the UI during the summer months.

Inevitable end-of-21st-century trends toward earlier surface runoff timing in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schwartz, M. A.; Hall, A. D.; Sun, F.; Walton, D.; Berg, N.

2015-12-01

Hybrid dynamical-statistical downscaling is used to produce surface runoff timing projections for California's Sierra Nevada, a high-elevation mountain range with significant seasonal snow cover. First, future climate change projections (RCP8.5 forcing scenario, 2081-2100 period) from five CMIP5 global climate models (GCMs) are dynamically downscaled. These projections reveal that future warming leads to a shift toward earlier snowmelt and surface runoff timing throughout the Sierra Nevada region. Relationships between warming and surface runoff timing from the dynamical simulations are used to build a simple statistical model that mimics the dynamical model's projected surface runoff timing changes given GCM input or other statistically-downscaled input. This statistical model can be used to produce surface runoff timing projections for other GCMs, periods, and forcing scenarios to quantify ensemble-mean changes, uncertainty due to intermodel variability and consequences stemming from choice of forcing scenario. For all CMIP5 GCMs and forcing scenarios, significant trends toward earlier surface runoff timing occur at elevations below 2500m. Thus, we conclude that trends toward earlier surface runoff timing by the end-of-the-21st century are inevitable. The changes to surface runoff timing diagnosed in this study have implications for many dimensions of climate change, including impacts on surface hydrology, water resources, and ecosystems.

Comparison of two Centennial-scale Sea Surface Temperature Datasets in the Regional Climate Change Studies of the China Seas

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Qingyuan, Wang; Yanan, Wang; Yiwei, Liu

2017-08-01

Two widely used sea surface temperature (SST) datasets are compared in this article. We examine characteristics in the climate variability of SST in the China Seas.Two series yielded almost the same warming trend for 1890-2013 (0.7-0.8°C/100 years). However, HadISST1 series shows much stronger warming trends during 1961-2013 and 1981-2013 than that of COBE SST2 series. The disagreement between data sets was marked after 1981. For the hiatus period 1998-2013, the cooling trends of HadISST1 series is much lower than that of COBE SST2. These differences between the two datasets are possibly caused by the different observations which are incorporated to fill with data-sparse regions since 1982. Those findings illustrate that there are some uncertainties in the estimate of SST warming patterns in certain regions. The results also indicate that the temporal and spatial deficiency of observed data is still the biggest handicap for analyzing multi-scale SST characteristics in regional area.

A spurious warming trend in the NMME equatorial Pacific SST hindcasts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shin, Chul-Su; Huang, Bohua

2017-06-01

Using seasonal hindcasts of six different models participating in the North American Multimodel Ensemble project, the trend of the predicted sea surface temperature (SST) in the tropical Pacific for 1982-2014 at each lead month and its temporal evolution with respect to the lead month are investigated for all individual models. Since the coupled models are initialized with the observed ocean, atmosphere, land states from observation-based reanalysis, some of them using their own data assimilation process, one would expect that the observed SST trend is reasonably well captured in their seasonal predictions. However, although the observed SST features a weak-cooling trend for the 33-year period with La Niña-like spatial pattern in the tropical central-eastern Pacific all year round, it is demonstrated that all models having a time-dependent realistic concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) display a warming trend in the equatorial Pacific that amplifies as the lead-time increases. In addition, these models' behaviors are nearly independent of the starting month of the hindcasts although the growth rates of the trend vary with the lead month. This key characteristic of the forecasted SST trend in the equatorial Pacific is also identified in the NCAR CCSM3 hindcasts that have the GHG concentration for a fixed year. This suggests that a global warming forcing may not play a significant role in generating the spurious warming trend of the coupled models' SST hindcasts in the tropical Pacific. This model SST trend in the tropical central-eastern Pacific, which is opposite to the observed one, causes a developing El Niño-like warming bias in the forecasted SST with its peak in boreal winter. Its implications for seasonal prediction are discussed.

Subtropical Gyre Variability as Seen from Satellites

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Signorini, Sergio R.; McClain, Charles R.

2011-01-01

A satellite multi-sensor approach is used to analyse the biological response of open ocean regions of the subtropical gyres to changes in physical forcing. Thirteen years (1998-2010) of SeaWiFS chlorophyll a (Chl-a), combined with concurrent satellite records of sea-surface temperature (SST) and sea level height, were analysed to investigate the seasonal and interannual variability of Chl-a concentration within these immense so-called ocean deserts. The seasonal variability of Chl-a within the gyres is driven mostly by the warming/cooling of surface waters. Summer warming promotes shallower mixed layers and lower Chl-a due to a reduction of vertical mixing and consequently a decrease in nutrient supply. The opposite happens during the winter cooling period. Therefore, long-term trends in SST have the potential to cause an impact on the interannual variability of Chl-a. Our analyses show that, during the 13 whole years of SeaWiFS data record, the North Pacific, Indian Ocean, and North Atlantic gyres experienced a decrease in Chl-a of 9%, 12%, and 11%, respectively, with corresponding SST increases of 0.27 C, 0.42 C, and 0.32 C. The South Pacific and South Atlantic gyres also showed warming trends but with weak positive trends in Chl-a that are not statistically significant. We hypothesize that the warming of surface waters in these two gyres are counterbalanced by other interacting physical and biological driving mechanisms, as indicated in previous studies.

Tracking ocean heat uptake during the surface warming hiatus

DOE PAGES

Liu, Wei; Xie, Shang -Ping; Lu, Jian

2016-03-30

Ocean heat uptake is observed to penetrate deep during the recent hiatus1,2,3 of global warming in the Atlantic and Southern Ocean. This has been suggested to indicate that the two regions are the driver of the surface warming hiatus4. We show that the deep heat penetration in the Atlantic and Southern Ocean is not unique to the hiatus but common to the past four decades including the 1970s-90s epoch of accelerated surface warming. Our analyses of a large ensemble simulation5 confirm the deep heat penetration in the Atlantic and Southern Ocean in ensemble members with or without surface warming hiatusmore » in the early 21th century. During the past four decades, the global ocean heat content (OHC) of upper 1500m is dominated by a warming trend, and the depth of anthropogenic heat penetration merely reflects the depth of the mean meridional overturning circulation in the basin. Furthermore, the heat penetration depth is not a valid basis to infer the hiatus mechanism.« less

Tracking ocean heat uptake during the surface warming hiatus

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Liu, Wei; Xie, Shang -Ping; Lu, Jian

Ocean heat uptake is observed to penetrate deep during the recent hiatus1,2,3 of global warming in the Atlantic and Southern Ocean. This has been suggested to indicate that the two regions are the driver of the surface warming hiatus4. We show that the deep heat penetration in the Atlantic and Southern Ocean is not unique to the hiatus but common to the past four decades including the 1970s-90s epoch of accelerated surface warming. Our analyses of a large ensemble simulation5 confirm the deep heat penetration in the Atlantic and Southern Ocean in ensemble members with or without surface warming hiatusmore » in the early 21th century. During the past four decades, the global ocean heat content (OHC) of upper 1500m is dominated by a warming trend, and the depth of anthropogenic heat penetration merely reflects the depth of the mean meridional overturning circulation in the basin. Furthermore, the heat penetration depth is not a valid basis to infer the hiatus mechanism.« less

Trend and Variability of China Precipitation in Spring and Summer: Linkage to Sea Surface Temperatures

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Yang, Fanglin; Lau, K.-M.

2004-01-01

Observational records in the past 50 years show an upward trend of boreal-summer precipitation over central eastern China and a downward trend over northern China. During boreal spring, the trend is upward over southeastern China and downward over central eastern China. This study explores the forcing mechanism of these trends in association with the global sea-surface temperature (SST) variations on the interannual and inter-decadal timescales. Results based on Singular Value Decomposition analyses (SVD) show that the interannual variability of China precipitation in boreal spring and summer can be well defined by two centers of actions for each season, which are co-varying with two interannual modes of SSTs. The first SVD modes of precipitation in spring and summer, which are centered in southeastern China and northern China, respectively, are linked to an ENSO-like mode of SSTs. The second SVD modes of precipitation in both seasons are confined to central eastern China, and are primarily linked to SST variations over the warm pool and Indian Ocean. Features of the anomalous 850-hPa winds and 700-Wa geopotential height corresponding to these modes support a physical mechanism that explains the causal links between the modal variations of precipitation and SSTs. On the decadal and longer timescale, similar causal links are found between the same modes of precipitation and SSTs, except for the case of springtime precipitation over central eastern China. For this case, while the interannual mode of precipitation is positively correlated with the interannual variations of SSTs over the warm pool and Indian Ocean; the inter-decadal mode is negatively correlated with a different SST mode, the North Pacific mode. The later is responsible for the observed downward trend of springtime precipitation over central eastern China. For all other cases, both the interannual and inter-decadal variations of precipitation can be explained by the same mode of SSTs. The upward trend of springtime precipitation over southeastern China and downward trend of summertime precipitation over northern China are attributable to the warming trend of the ENSO-like mode. The recent frequent summertime floods over central eastern China are linked to the warming trend of SSTs over the warm pool and Indian Ocean.

Urbanization Causes Increased Cloud Base Height and Decreased Fog in Coastal Southern California

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Williams, A. Park; Schwartz, Rachel E.; Iacobellis, Sam; Seager, Richard; Cook, Benjamin I.; Still, Christopher J.; Husak, Gregory; Michaelsen, Joel

2015-01-01

Subtropical marine stratus clouds regulate coastal and global climate, but future trends in these clouds are uncertain. In coastal Southern California (CSCA), interannual variations in summer stratus cloud occurrence are spatially coherent across 24 airfields and dictated by positive relationships with stability above the marine boundary layer (MBL) and MBL height. Trends, however, have been spatially variable since records began in the mid-1900s due to differences in nighttime warming. Among CSCA airfields, differences in nighttime warming, but not daytime warming, are strongly and positively related to fraction of nearby urban cover, consistent with an urban heat island effect. Nighttime warming raises the near-surface dew point depression, which lifts the altitude of condensation and cloud base height, thereby reducing fog frequency. Continued urban warming, rising cloud base heights, and associated effects on energy and water balance would profoundly impact ecological and human systems in highly populated and ecologically diverse CSCA.

Twentieth century bipolar seesaw of the Arctic and Antarctic surface air temperatures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chylek, Petr; Folland, Chris K.; Lesins, Glen; Dubey, Manvendra K.

2010-04-01

Understanding the phase relationship between climate changes in the Arctic and Antarctic regions is essential for our understanding of the dynamics of the Earth's climate system. In this paper we show that the 20th century de-trended Arctic and Antarctic temperatures vary in anti-phase seesaw pattern - when the Arctic warms the Antarctica cools and visa versa. This is the first time that a bi-polar seesaw pattern has been identified in the 20th century Arctic and Antarctic temperature records. The Arctic (Antarctic) de-trended temperatures are highly correlated (anti-correlated) with the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) index suggesting the Atlantic Ocean as a possible link between the climate variability of the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Recent accelerated warming of the Arctic results from a positive reinforcement of the linear warming trend (due to an increasing concentration of greenhouse gases and other possible forcings) by the warming phase of the multidecadal climate variability (due to fluctuations of the Atlantic Ocean circulation).

Tropical Indian Ocean warming contributions to China winter climate trends since 1960

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Qigang; Yao, Yonghong; Liu, Shizuo; Cao, DanDan; Cheng, Luyao; Hu, Haibo; Sun, Leng; Yao, Ying; Yang, Zhiqi; Gao, Xuxu; Schroeder, Steven R.

2018-01-01

This study investigates observed and modeled contributions of global sea surface temperature (SST) to China winter climate trends in 1960-2014, including increased precipitation, warming through about 1997, and cooling since then. Observations and Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) simulations with prescribed historical SST and sea ice show that tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) warming and increasing rainfall causes diabatic heating that generates a tropospheric wave train with anticyclonic 500-hPa height anomaly centers in the TIO or equatorial western Pacific (TIWP) and northeastern Eurasia (EA) and a cyclonic anomaly over China, referred to as the TIWP-EA wave train. The cyclonic anomaly causes Indochina moisture convergence and southwesterly moist flow that enhances South China precipitation, while the northern anticyclone enhances cold surges, sometimes causing severe ice storms. AMIP simulations show a 1960-1997 China cooling trend by simulating increasing instead of decreasing Arctic 500-hPa heights that move the northern anticyclone into Siberia, but enlarge the cyclonic anomaly so it still simulates realistic China precipitation trend patterns. A separate idealized TIO SST warming simulation simulates the TIWP-EA feature more realistically with correct precipitation patterns and supports the TIWP-EA teleconnection as the primary mechanism for long-term increasing precipitation in South China since 1960. Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) experiments simulate a reduced TIO SST warming trend and weak precipitation trends, so the TIWP-EA feature is absent and strong drying is simulated in South China for 1960-1997. These simulations highlight the need for accurately modeled SST to correctly attribute regional climate trends.

Accelerated warming and emergent trends in fisheries biomass yields of the world's large marine ecosystems.

PubMed

Sherman, Kenneth; Belkin, Igor M; Friedland, Kevin D; O'Reilly, John; Hyde, Kimberly

2009-06-01

Information on the effects of global climate change on trends in global fisheries biomass yields has been limited in spatial and temporal scale. Results are presented of a global study of the impact of sea surface temperature (SST) changes over the last 25 years on the fisheries yields of 63 large marine ecosystems (LMEs) that annually produce 80% of the world's marine fisheries catches. Warming trends were observed in 61 LMEs around the globe. In 18 of the LMEs, rates of SST warming were two to four times faster during the past 25 years than the globally averaged rates of SST warming reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Effects of warming on fisheries biomass yields were greatest in the fast-warming northern Northeast Atlantic LMEs, where increasing trends in fisheries biomass yields were related to zooplankton biomass increases. In contrast, fisheries biomass yields of LMEs in the fast-warming, more southerly reaches of the Northeast Atlantic were declining in response to decreases in zooplankton abundance. The LMEs around the margins of the Indian Ocean, where SSTs were among the world's slowest warming, revealed a consistent pattern of fisheries biomass increases during the past 25 years, driven principally by human need for food security from fisheries resources. As a precautionary approach toward more sustainable fisheries utilization, management measures to limit the total allowable catch through a cap-and-sustain approach are suggested for the developing nations recently fishing heavily on resources of the Agulhas Current, Somali Current, Arabian Sea, and Bay of Bengal LMEs.

Spatial patterns of recent Antarctic surface temperature trends and the importance of natural variability: lessons from multiple reconstructions and the CMIP5 models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, Karen L.; Polvani, Lorenzo M.

2017-04-01

The recent annually averaged warming of the Antarctic Peninsula, and of West Antarctica, stands in stark contrast to very small trends over East Antarctica. This asymmetry arises primarily from a highly significant warming of West Antarctica in austral spring and a cooling of East Antarctica in austral autumn. Here we examine whether this East-West asymmetry is a response to anthropogenic climate forcings or a manifestation of natural climate variability. We compare the observed Antarctic surface air temperature trends over two distinct time periods (1960-2005 and 1979-2005), and with those simulated by 40 models participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We find that the observed East-West asymmetry differs substantially between the two periods and, furthermore, that it is completely absent from the forced response seen in the CMIP5 multi-model mean, from which all natural variability is eliminated by the averaging. We also examine the relationship between the Southern Annular mode (SAM) and Antarctic temperature trends, in both models and reanalyses, and again conclude that there is little evidence of anthropogenic SAM-induced driving of the recent temperature trends. These results offer new, compelling evidence pointing to natural climate variability as a key contributor to the recent warming of West Antarctica and of the Peninsula.

Role of land-surface changes in arctic summer warming

USGS Publications Warehouse

Chapin, F. S.; Sturm, M.; Serreze, Mark C.; McFadden, J.P.; Key, J.R.; Lloyd, A.H.; McGuire, A.D.; Rupp, T.S.; Lynch, A.H.; Schimel, Joshua P.; Beringer, J.; Chapman, W.L.; Epstein, H.E.; Euskirchen, E.S.; Hinzman, L.D.; Jia, G.; Ping, C.-L.; Tape, K.D.; Thompson, C.D.C.; Walker, D.A.; Welker, J.M.

2005-01-01

A major challenge in predicting Earth's future climate state is to understand feedbacks that alter greenhouse-gas forcing. Here we synthesize field data from arctic Alaska, showing that terrestrial changes in summer albedo contribute substantially to recent high-latitude warming trends. Pronounced terrestrial summer warming in arctic Alaska correlates with a lengthening of the snow-free season that has increased atmospheric heating locally by about 3 watts per square meter per decade (similar in magnitude to the regional heating expected over multiple decades from a doubling of atmospheric CO2). The continuation of current trends in shrub and tree expansion could further amplify this atmospheric heating by two to seven times.

The ocean's role in polar climate change: asymmetric Arctic and Antarctic responses to greenhouse gas and ozone forcing

PubMed Central

Marshall, John; Armour, Kyle C.; Scott, Jeffery R.; Kostov, Yavor; Hausmann, Ute; Ferreira, David; Shepherd, Theodore G.; Bitz, Cecilia M.

2014-01-01

In recent decades, the Arctic has been warming and sea ice disappearing. By contrast, the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has been (mainly) cooling and sea-ice extent growing. We argue here that interhemispheric asymmetries in the mean ocean circulation, with sinking in the northern North Atlantic and upwelling around Antarctica, strongly influence the sea-surface temperature (SST) response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing, accelerating warming in the Arctic while delaying it in the Antarctic. Furthermore, while the amplitude of GHG forcing has been similar at the poles, significant ozone depletion only occurs over Antarctica. We suggest that the initial response of SST around Antarctica to ozone depletion is one of cooling and only later adds to the GHG-induced warming trend as upwelling of sub-surface warm water associated with stronger surface westerlies impacts surface properties. We organize our discussion around ‘climate response functions’ (CRFs), i.e. the response of the climate to ‘step’ changes in anthropogenic forcing in which GHG and/or ozone-hole forcing is abruptly turned on and the transient response of the climate revealed and studied. Convolutions of known or postulated GHG and ozone-hole forcing functions with their respective CRFs then yield the transient forced SST response (implied by linear response theory), providing a context for discussion of the differing warming/cooling trends in the Arctic and Antarctic. We speculate that the period through which we are now passing may be one in which the delayed warming of SST associated with GHG forcing around Antarctica is largely cancelled by the cooling effects associated with the ozone hole. By mid-century, however, ozone-hole effects may instead be adding to GHG warming around Antarctica but with diminished amplitude as the ozone hole heals. The Arctic, meanwhile, responding to GHG forcing but in a manner amplified by ocean heat transport, may continue to warm at an accelerating rate. PMID:24891392

The ocean's role in polar climate change: asymmetric Arctic and Antarctic responses to greenhouse gas and ozone forcing.

PubMed

Marshall, John; Armour, Kyle C; Scott, Jeffery R; Kostov, Yavor; Hausmann, Ute; Ferreira, David; Shepherd, Theodore G; Bitz, Cecilia M

2014-07-13

In recent decades, the Arctic has been warming and sea ice disappearing. By contrast, the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has been (mainly) cooling and sea-ice extent growing. We argue here that interhemispheric asymmetries in the mean ocean circulation, with sinking in the northern North Atlantic and upwelling around Antarctica, strongly influence the sea-surface temperature (SST) response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing, accelerating warming in the Arctic while delaying it in the Antarctic. Furthermore, while the amplitude of GHG forcing has been similar at the poles, significant ozone depletion only occurs over Antarctica. We suggest that the initial response of SST around Antarctica to ozone depletion is one of cooling and only later adds to the GHG-induced warming trend as upwelling of sub-surface warm water associated with stronger surface westerlies impacts surface properties. We organize our discussion around 'climate response functions' (CRFs), i.e. the response of the climate to 'step' changes in anthropogenic forcing in which GHG and/or ozone-hole forcing is abruptly turned on and the transient response of the climate revealed and studied. Convolutions of known or postulated GHG and ozone-hole forcing functions with their respective CRFs then yield the transient forced SST response (implied by linear response theory), providing a context for discussion of the differing warming/cooling trends in the Arctic and Antarctic. We speculate that the period through which we are now passing may be one in which the delayed warming of SST associated with GHG forcing around Antarctica is largely cancelled by the cooling effects associated with the ozone hole. By mid-century, however, ozone-hole effects may instead be adding to GHG warming around Antarctica but with diminished amplitude as the ozone hole heals. The Arctic, meanwhile, responding to GHG forcing but in a manner amplified by ocean heat transport, may continue to warm at an accelerating rate.

A Test of Model Validation from Observed Temperature Trends

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Singer, S. F.

2006-12-01

How much of current warming is due to natural causes and how much is manmade? This requires a comparison of the patterns of observed warming with the best available models that incorporate both anthropogenic (greenhouse gases and aerosols) as well as natural climate forcings (solar and volcanic). Fortunately, we have the just published U.S.-Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report (www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/default.htm), based on best current information. As seen in Fig. 1.3F of the report, modeled surface temperature trends change little with latitude, except for a stronger warming in the Arctic. The observations, however, show a strong surface warming in the northern hemisphere but not in the southern hemisphere (see Fig. 3.5C and 3.6D). The Antarctic is found to be cooling and Arctic temperatures, while currently rising, were higher in the 1930s than today. Although the Executive Summary of the CCSP report claims "clear evidence" for anthropogenic warming, based on comparing tropospheric and surface temperature trends, the report itself does not confirm this. Greenhouse models indicate that the tropics should provide the most sensitive location for their validation; trends there should increase by 200-300 percent with altitude, peaking at around 10 kilometers. The observations, however, show the opposite: flat or even decreasing tropospheric trend values (see Fig. 3.7 and also Fig. 5.7E). This disparity is demonstrated most strikingly in Fig. 5.4G, which shows the difference between surface and troposphere trends for a collection of models (displayed as a histogram) and for balloon and satellite data. [The disparities are less apparent in the Summary, which displays model results in terms of "range" rather than as histograms.] There may be several possible reasons for the disparity: Instrumental and other effects that exaggerate or otherwise distort observed temperature trends. Or, more likely: Shortcomings in models that result in much reduced values of climate sensitivity; for example, the neglect of important negative feedbacks. Allowing for uncertainties in the data and for imperfect models, there is only one valid conclusion from the failure of greenhouse models to explain the observations: The human contribution to global warming is still quite small, so that natural climate factors are dominant. This may also explain why the climate was cooling from 1940 to 1975 -- even as greenhouse-gas levels increased rapidly. An overall test for climate prediction may soon be possible by measuring the ongoing rise in sea level. According to my estimates, sea level should rise by 1.5 to 2.0 cm per decade (about the same rate as in past millennia); the U.N.-IPCC (4th Assessment Report) predicts 1.4 to 4.3 cm per decade. In the New York Review of Books (July 13, 2006), however, James Hansen suggests 20 feet or more per century -- equivalent to about 60 cm or more per decade.

Observed temperature trends in the Indian Ocean over 1960-1999 and associated mechanisms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alory, Gaël; Wijffels, Susan; Meyers, Gary

2007-01-01

The linear trends in oceanic temperature from 1960 to 1999 are estimated using the new Indian Ocean Thermal Archive (IOTA), a compilation of historical temperature profiles. Widespread surface warming is found, as in other data sets, and reproduced in IPCC climate model simulations for the 20th century. This warming is particularly large in the subtropics, and extends down to 800 m around 40-50°S. Models suggest the deep-reaching subtropical warming is related to a 0.5° southward shift of the subtropical gyre driven by a strengthening of the westerly winds, and associated with an upward trend in the Southern Annular Mode index. In the tropics, IOTA shows a subsurface cooling corresponding to a shoaling of the thermocline and increasing vertical stratification. Most models suggest this trend in the tropical Indian thermocline is likely associated with the observed weakening of the Pacific trade winds and transmitted to the Indian Ocean by the Indonesian throughflow.

Competition between global warming and an abrupt collapse of the AMOC in Earth's energy imbalance.

PubMed

Drijfhout, Sybren

2015-10-06

A collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) leads to global cooling through fast feedbacks that selectively amplify the response in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). How such cooling competes with global warming has long been a topic for speculation, but was never addressed using a climate model. Here it is shown that global cooling due to a collapsing AMOC obliterates global warming for a period of 15-20 years. Thereafter, the global mean temperature trend is reversed and becomes similar to a simulation without an AMOC collapse. The resulting surface warming hiatus lasts for 40-50 years. Global warming and AMOC-induced NH cooling are governed by similar feedbacks, giving rise to a global net radiative imbalance of similar sign, although the former is associated with surface warming, the latter with cooling. Their footprints in outgoing longwave and absorbed shortwave radiation are very distinct, making attribution possible.

Role of internal variability in recent decadal to multidecadal tropical Pacific climate changes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bordbar, Mohammad Hadi; Martin, Thomas; Latif, Mojib; Park, Wonsun

2017-05-01

While the Earth's surface has considerably warmed over the past two decades, the tropical Pacific has featured a cooling of sea surface temperatures in its eastern and central parts, which went along with an unprecedented strengthening of the equatorial trade winds, the surface component of the Pacific Walker Circulation (PWC). Previous studies show that this decadal trend in the trade winds is generally beyond the range of decadal trends simulated by climate models when forced by historical radiative forcing. There is still a debate on the origin of and the potential role that internal variability may have played in the recent decadal surface wind trend. Using a number of long control (unforced) integrations of global climate models and several observational data sets, we address the question as to whether the recent decadal to multidecadal trends are robustly classified as an unusual event or the persistent response to external forcing. The observed trends in the tropical Pacific surface climate are still within the range of the long-term internal variability spanned by the models but represent an extreme realization of this variability. Thus, the recent observed decadal trends in the tropical Pacific, though highly unusual, could be of natural origin. We note that the long-term trends in the selected PWC indices exhibit a large observational uncertainty, even hindering definitive statements about the sign of the trends.