Identification

Title

On the effect of historical SST patterns on radiative feedback

Abstract

We investigate the dependence of radiative feedback on the pattern of sea-surface temperature (SST) change in 14 Atmospheric General Circulation Models (AGCMs) forced with observed variations in SST and sea-ice over the historical record from 1871 to near-present. We find that over 1871-1980, the Earth warmed with feedbacks largely consistent and strongly correlated with long-term climate sensitivity feedbacks (diagnosed from corresponding atmosphere-ocean GCM abrupt-4xCO2 simulations). Post 1980, however, the Earth warmed with unusual trends in tropical Pacific SSTs (enhanced warming in the west, cooling in the east) and cooling in the Southern Ocean that drove climate feedback to be uncorrelated with-and indicating much lower climate sensitivity than-that expected for long-term CO2 increase. We show that these conclusions are not strongly dependent on the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) II SST data set used to force the AGCMs, though the magnitude of feedback post 1980 is generally smaller in nine AGCMs forced with alternative HadISST1 SST boundary conditions. We quantify a "pattern effect" (defined as the difference between historical and long-term CO2 feedback) equal to 0.48 +/- 0.47 [5%-95%] W m(-2) K-1 for the time-period 1871-2010 when the AGCMs are forced with HadISST1 SSTs, or 0.70 +/- 0.47 [5%-95%] W m(-2) K-1 when forced with AMIP II SSTs. Assessed changes in the Earth's historical energy budget agree with the AGCM feedback estimates. Furthermore satellite observations of changes in top-of-atmosphere radiative fluxes since 1985 suggest that the pattern effect was particularly strong over recent decades but may be waning post 2014.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7v98cvs

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

2022-09-27T00:00:00Z

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