The influence of climate feedbacks on regional hydrological changes under warming is poorly understood. Here, a moist energy balance model (MEBM) with a Hadley Cell parameterization is used to isolate the influence of climate feedbacks on changes in zonal-mean precipitation-minus-evaporation (P-E) under greenhouse-gas forcing. It is shown that cloud feedbacks act to narrow bands of tropical P-E and increase P-E in the deep tropics. The surface-albedo feedback shifts the location of maximum tropical P-E and increases P-E in the polar regions. The intermodel spread in the P-E changes associated with feedbacks arises mainly from cloud feedbacks, with the lapse-rate and surface-albedo feedbacks playing important roles in the polar regions. The P-E change associated with cloud feedback locking in the MEBM is similar to that of a climate model with inactive cloud feedbacks. This work highlights the unique role that climate feedbacks play in causing deviations from the “wet-gets-wetter, dry-gets-drier” paradigm.

A document by Aurora Basinski-Ferris. Click on the document to view its contents.

A document by Matt Luongo. Click on the document to view its contents.

Regional patterns of sea level rise are affected by a range of factors including glacial melting, which has occurred in recent decades and is projected to increase in the future, perhaps dramatically. Previous modeling studies have typically included fluxes from melting glacial ice only as a surface forcing of the ocean or as an offline addition to the sea surface height fields produced by climate models. However, observational estimates suggest that the majority of the meltwater from the Antarctic Ice Sheet actually enters the ocean at depth through ice shelf basal melt. Here we use simulations with an ocean general circulation model in an idealized configuration. The results show that the simulated global sea level rise pattern is sensitive to the depth at which Antarctic meltwater enters the ocean. Further analysis suggests that the response is dictated primarily by the steric response to the depth of the meltwater flux.

The uncertainty in polar cloud feedbacks calls for process understanding of the cloud response to climate warming. As an initial step toward improved process understanding, we investigate the seasonal cycle of polar clouds in the current climate by adopting a novel modeling framework using large eddy simulations (LES), which explicitly resolve cloud dynamics. Resolved horizontal and vertical advection of heat and moisture from an idealized general circulation model (GCM) are prescribed as forcing in the LES. The LES are also forced with prescribed sea ice thickness, but surface temperature, atmospheric temperature, and moisture evolve freely without nudging. A semigray radiative transfer scheme without water vapor and cloud feedbacks allows the GCM and LES to achieve closed energy budgets more easily than would be possible with more complex schemes. This enables the mean states in the two models to be consistently compared, without the added complications from interaction with more comprehensive radiation. We show that the LES closely follow the GCM seasonal cycle, and the seasonal cycle of low-level clouds in the LES resembles observations: maximum cloud liquid occurs in late summer and early autumn, and winter clouds are dominated by ice in the upper troposphere. Large-scale advection of moisture provides the main source of water vapor for the liquid-containing clouds in summer, while a temperature advection peak in winter makes the atmosphere relatively dry and reduces cloud condensate. The framework we develop and employ can be used broadly for studying cloud processes and the response of polar clouds to climate warming.

State-of-the-art climate models simulate a large spread in the projected decline of Arctic sea-ice area (SIA) over the 21st century. Here we diagnose causes of this intermodel spread using a simple model that approximates future SIA based on present SIA and the sensitivity of SIA to Arctic temperatures. This model accounts for 70-95% of the intermodel variance, with the majority of the spread arising from present-day biases. The remaining spread arises from intermodel differences in Arctic warming, with some contribution from differences in the local sea-ice sensitivity. Using observations to constrain the projections moves the probability of an ice-free Arctic forward by 10-35 years when compared to unconstrained projections. Under a high-emissions scenario, an ice-free Arctic will likely (>66% probability) occur between 2036-2056 in September and 2050-2068 from July-October. Under a medium-emissions scenario, the ‘likely’ date occurs between 2040-2062 in September and much later in the 21st century from July-October.

Previous studies have found that Northern Hemisphere aerosol-like cooling induces a La Nina-like quasi-equilibrium response in the tropical Indo-Pacific. Here, we explore a coupled atmosphere-ocean feedback pathway by which this response is communicated. We override ocean surface wind stress in a comprehensive climate model to decompose the total ocean-atmosphere response to forced extratropical cooling into the response of surface buoyancy forcing alone and surface momentum forcing alone. In the subtropics, the buoyancy-forced response dominates: the positive low cloud feedback amplifies sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies which are then communicated to the tropics via wind-driven evaporative cooling. In the deep tropics, the momentum-driven Bjerknes feedback creates zonally asymmetric SST patterns in the Indian and Pacific basins. Although subtropical cloud feedbacks are model-dependent, our results suggest this feedback pathway is robust across a suite of models such that models with a stronger subtropical low cloud response exhibit a stronger La Nina response.

Arctic Amplification is robustly seen in climate model simulations of future warming and in the paleoclimate record. Here, we show that in the instrumental record Arctic Amplification is only a recent phenomenon, and that for much of the 20th century the Arctic cooled while the global-mean temperature rose. To investigate why this occurred, we analyze large ensembles of comprehensive climate model simulations under different forcing scenarios. Our results suggest that the global warming from greenhouse gases was largely offset in the Arctic by regional cooling due to aerosols, with internal climate variability also contributing to Arctic cooling and global warming trends during this period. This suggests that the disruption of Arctic Amplification was due to a combination of factors unique to the 20th century, and that enhanced Arctic warming should be expected to be a consistent feature of climate change over the coming century.

The Antarctic Slope Front (ASF) is a strong gradient in water mass properties close to the Antarctic margins. Heat transport across the ASF is important to Earth’s climate, as it influences melting of ice shelves, the formation of bottom water, and thus the global meridional overturning circulation. Previous studies based on relatively low-resolution models have reported contradictory findings regarding the impact of additional meltwater on onshore heat transport onto the Antarctic continental shelf: it remains unclear whether meltwater enhances shoreward heat transport, leading to a positive feedback, or further isolates the continental shelf from the open ocean. In this study, heat transport across the ASF is investigated using high-resolution, process-oriented simulations. It is found that shoreward heat transport is primarily controlled by the salinity gradient of the shelf waters: both freshening and salinification of the shelf waters relative to the offshore waters lead to increased heat flux onto the continental shelf. For salty shelves, the overturning consists of a dense water outflow that drives a shoreward heat flux near the seafloor; for fresh shelves, there is a shallow, eddy-driven overturning circulation that is associated with an export of fresh surface waters and a near-surface shoreward heat flux. The eddy-driven overturning associated with coastal freshening may lead to a positive feedback in a warming climate: large volumes of meltwater increase shoreward heat transport, causing further melt of ice shelves.

The Antarctic Slope Current (ASC) plays a central role in redistributing water masses, sea ice, and tracer properties around the Antarctic margins, and in mediating cross-slope exchanges. While the ASC has historically been understood as a wind-driven circulation, recent studies have highlighted important momentum transfers due to mesoscale eddies and tidal flows. Furthermore, momentum input due to wind stress is transferred through sea ice to the ASC during most of the year, yet previous studies have typically considered the circulations of the ocean and sea ice independently. Thus it remains unclear to what extent the momentum input from the winds is mediated by sea ice, tidal forcing, and transient eddies in the ocean, and how the resulting momentum transfers serve to structure the ASC. In this study the dynamics of the coupled ocean/sea ice ASC circulation are investigated using high-resolution process-oriented simulations, and interpreted with the aid of a reduced-order model. In almost all simulations considered here, sea ice redistributes almost 100% of the wind stress away from the continental slope, resulting in approximately identical sea ice and ocean surface flows in the core of the ASC. This ice-ocean coupling results from suppression of vertical momentum transfer by mesoscale eddies over the continental slope, which allows the sea ice to accelerate the ocean surface flow until the speeds coincide. Tidal acceleration of the along-slope flow exaggerates this effect, and may even result in ocean-to-ice momentum transfer. The implications of these findings for along-and across-slope transport of water masses and sea ice around Antarctica are discussed.