Identification

Title

Contrasting impacts of radiative forcing in the Southern Ocean versus southern tropics on ITCZ position and energy transport in one GFDL climate model

Abstract

Most current climate models suffer from pronounced cloud and radiation biases in the Southern Ocean (SO) and in the tropics. Using one GFDL climate model, this study investigates the migration of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) with prescribed top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) shortwave radiative heating in the SO (50 degrees-80 degrees S) versus the southern tropics (ST; 0 degrees-20 degrees S). Results demonstrate that the ITCZ position response to the ST forcing is twice as strong as the SO forcing, which is primarily driven by the contrasting sea surface temperature (SST) gradient over the tropics; however, the mechanism for the formation of the SST pattern remains elusive. Energy budget analysis reveals that the conventional energetic constraint framework is inadequate in explaining the ITCZ shift in these two perturbed experiments. For both cases, the anomalous Hadley circulation does not contribute to transport the imposed energy from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere, given a positive mean gross moist stability in the equatorial region. Changes in the cross-equatorial atmospheric energy are primarily transported by atmospheric transient eddies when the anomalous ITCZ shift is most pronounced during December-May. The partitioning of energy transport between the atmosphere and ocean shows latitudinal dependence: the atmosphere and ocean play an overall equivalent role in transporting the imposed energy for the extratropical SO forcing, while for the ST forcing, the imposed energy is nearly completely transported by the atmosphere. This contrast originates from the different ocean heat uptake and also the different meridional scale of the anomalous ocean circulation.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d70k2cc7

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

2018-07-01T00:00:00Z

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