Search Menu
DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
Search Scholarly Publications

Title: Understand the Direct Effect of CO 2 Increase on Tropical Circulation and TC Activity: Land Surface Warming Versus Direct Radiative Forcing

Journal Article · · Geophysical Research Letters
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Berkeley CA USA
  2. NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Princeton NJ USA
  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Berkeley CA USA, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences University of California, Davis Davis CA USA
+ Show Author Affiliations

Abstract The direct effect of increased CO 2 involves contributions from both land warming and direct radiative forcing. Here, their relative impacts on tropical circulation and tropical cyclones (TCs) are quantified by increasing CO 2 over land and ocean separately in a high‐resolution atmosphere‐only model. It is found that land warming induces substantial vertical velocity changes over nearby oceans and such local changes are compensated by opposite motions within tropical ascending regions. The cloud mask effect leads to smaller CO 2 ‐induced radiative heating over ascending regions. Such inhomogeneity in radiative forcing dominates compensated changes in surface fluxes and gross moist stability, leading to the slowdown of the tropical overturning circulation. TC activity is tightly linked with the large‐scale ascent because of the influence on the atmospheric humidity. Regional circulation changes caused by land warming strongly suppresses TC activity over the northwest Pacific, while weakened ascent from direct radiative forcing causes an overall TC reduction.

Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1560203
Journal Information:
Geophysical Research Letters, Journal Name: Geophysical Research Letters Journal Issue: 12 Vol. 46; ISSN 0094-8276
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (31)

Inhomogeneous radiative forcing of homogeneous greenhouse gases: Inhomogeneous Forcing of Homogeneous Gas journal March 2016
Surface temperature dependence of tropical cyclone‐permitting simulations in a spherical model with uniform thermal forcing journal March 2016
Land dominates the regional response to CO 2 direct radiative forcing journal November 2016
Differential Radiative Heating Drives Tropical Atmospheric Circulation Weakening: Radiative Heating and Tropical Circulation journal October 2017
The sensitivity of hurricane frequency to ITCZ changes and radiatively forced warming in aquaplanet simulations: SENSITIVITY OF AQUAPLANET HURRICANES journal August 2013
The seasonal response of a general circulation model to changes in CO2 and sea temperatures journal January 1983
On Co2 climate sensitivity and model dependence of results journal January 1987
Fast versus slow response in climate change: implications for the global hydrological cycle journal May 2009
Cloud Adjustment and its Role in CO2 Radiative Forcing and Climate Sensitivity: A Review journal November 2011
Energetic Constraints on Precipitation Under Climate Change journal November 2011
Fast cloud adjustment to increasing CO 2 in a superparameterized climate model : FAST RESPONSE TO 4XCO2 journal February 2012
Separating the Influences of Land Warming, the Direct CO 2 Effect, the Plant Physiological Effect, and SST Warming on Regional Precipitation Changes journal January 2019
Constraints on future changes in climate and the hydrologic cycle journal September 2002
A re-examination of the projected subtropical precipitation decline journal November 2016
Robust direct effect of carbon dioxide on tropical circulation and regional precipitation journal April 2013
Direct weakening of tropical circulations from masked CO 2 radiative forcing journal October 2015
Atmospheric Circulation Trends, 1950–2000: The Relative Roles of Sea Surface Temperature Forcing and Direct Atmospheric Radiative Forcing journal January 2009
Simulations of Global Hurricane Climatology, Interannual Variability, and Response to Global Warming Using a 50-km Resolution GCM journal December 2009
Midlevel Ventilation’s Constraint on Tropical Cyclone Intensity journal June 2010
A Poisson Regression Index for Tropical Cyclone Genesis and the Role of Large-Scale Vorticity in Genesis journal May 2011
An Overview of CMIP5 and the Experiment Design journal April 2012
Parameter Study of Tropical Cyclones in Rotating Radiative–Convective Equilibrium with Column Physics and Resolution of a 25-km GCM journal March 2014
The Sensitivity of Tropical Cyclone Activity to Off-Equatorial Thermal Forcing in Aquaplanet Simulations journal June 2015
A Model for the Complete Radial Structure of the Tropical Cyclone Wind Field. Part I: Comparison with Observed Structure* journal September 2015
Tropical Cyclones in Rotating Radiative–Convective Equilibrium with Coupled SST journal March 2017
The Response of Tropical Cyclone Statistics to an Increase in CO 2 with Fixed Sea Surface Temperatures journal October 2011
TC-Permitting GCM Simulations of Hurricane Frequency Response to Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Projected for the Late-Twenty-First Century journal April 2012
Contributions of Different Cloud Types to Feedbacks and Rapid Adjustments in CMIP5 journal July 2013
Testing the Performance of Tropical Cyclone Genesis Indices in Future Climates Using the HiRAM Model journal December 2014
Tropical Cyclone Climatology in a High-resolution AGCM −Impacts of SST Warming and CO2 Increase− journal January 2005
Tropical cyclone activity downscaled from NOAA-CIRES Reanalysis, 1908–1958 journal January 2010

Similar Records

Related Subjects