Identification

Title

Role of AMOC in transient climate response to greenhouse gas forcing in two coupled models

Abstract

As the greenhouse gas concentrations increase, a warmer climate is expected. However, numerous internal climate processes can modulate the primary radiative warming response of the climate system to rising greenhouse gas forcing. Here the particular internal climate process that we focus on is the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), an important global-scale feature of ocean circulation that serves to transport heat and other scalars, and we address the question of how the mean strength of AMOC can modulate the transient climate response. While the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2) and the Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 1 (E3SM1) have very similar equilibrium/effective climate sensitivity, our analysis suggests that a weaker AMOC contributes in part to the higher transient climate response to a rising greenhouse gas forcing seen in E3SM1 by permitting a faster warming of the upper ocean and a concomitant slower warming of the subsurface ocean. Likewise the stronger AMOC in CESM2 by permitting a slower warming of the upper ocean leads in part to a smaller transient climate response. Thus, while the mean strength of AMOC does not affect the equilibrium/effective climate sensitivity, it is likely to play an important role in determining the transient climate response on the centennial time scale.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7vd72t8

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2020-06-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact