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A number of recent papers have argued that the mechanical energy budget of the ocean places constraints on how the thermohaline circulation is driven. These papers have been used to argue that climate models, which do not specifically account for the energy of mixing, potentially miss a very important feedback on climate change. This paper reexamines the question of what energetic arguments can teach us about the climate system and concludes that the relationship between energetics and climate is not straightforward. By analyzing the buoyancy transport equation, it is demonstrated that the large-scale transport of heat within the ocean requires an energy source of around 0.2 TW to accomplish vertical transport and around 0.4 TW (resulting from cabbeling) to accomplish horizontal transport. Within two general circulation models, this energy is almost entirely supplied by surface winds. It is also shown that there is no necessary relationship between heat transport and mechanical energy supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processes in the climate system that can either amplify or dampen the climate response to an external perturbation are referred to as climate feedbacks. Climate sensitivity estimates depend critically on radiative feedbacks associated with water vapor, lapse rate, clouds, snow, and sea ice, and global estimates of these feedbacks differ among general circulation models. By reviewing recent observational, numerical, and theoretical studies, this paper shows that there has been progress since the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in (i) the understanding of the physical mechanisms involved in these feedbacks, (ii) the interpretation of intermodel differences in global estimates of these feedbacks, and (iii) the development of methodologies of evaluation of these feedbacks (or of some components) using observations. This suggests that continuing developments in climate feedback research will progressively help make it possible to constrain the GCMs’ range of climate feedbacks and climate sensitivity through an ensemble of diagnostics based on physical understanding and observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface wind ( U10) and significant wave height (Hs) response to global warming are investigated using a coupled atmosphere-wave model by perturbing the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) with anomalies generated by the Working Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM) phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) coupled models that use the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4)/Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A1B (SRES A1B) scenario late in the twenty-first century. Several consistent changes were observed across all four realizations for the seasonal means: robust increase of U10 and Hs in the Southern Ocean for both the austral summer and winter due to the poleward shift of the jet stream; a dipole pattern of the U10 and Hs with increases in the northeast sector and decreases at the midlatitude during boreal winter in the North Atlantic due to the more frequent occurrence of the positive phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO); and strong decrease of U10 and Hs in the tropical western Pacific Ocean during austral summer, which might be caused by the joint effect of the weakening of the Walker circulation and the large hurricane frequency decrease in the South Pacific. Changes of the 99th percentile U10 and Hs are twice as strong as changes in the seasonal means, and the maximum changes are mainly dominated by the changes in hurricanes. Robust strong decreases of U10 and Hs in the South Pacific are obtained because of the large hurricane frequency decrease, while the results in the Northern Hemisphere basins differ among the models. An additional sensitivity experiment suggests that the qualitative response of U10 and Hs is not affected by using SST anomalies only and maintaining the radiative forcing unchanged (using 1980 values), as in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regional response of the global ocean to low-frequency changes in atmospheric pressure loading, ηib, is analyzed as it occurs in the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) coupled ocean–atmosphere climate model in response to increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Results suggest that long-term changes in ηib can lead to increases in high-latitude sea level by up to 5 and 10 cm, respectively, after doubling and quadrupling the atmospheric CO2 content. At low latitudes, sea level will decrease simultaneously between 2 and 4 cm through the combined effects of changes in the atmospheric circulation and through the increase of its moisture content. In subpolar regions, associated rates of sea level increase are of the order of 0.4–0.6 mm yr-1 for quadrupled atmospheric CO2 concentrations, while in mid- and low latitudes, sea level will decrease at a rate of 0.2 mm yr-1. Differences between doubling and quadrupling CO2 concentrations indicate regionally dependent nonlinearities in the changing climate system. The analysis suggests that in some regions (including the coasts of northern Europe) low-frequency ηib changes could be as large as 10%–20% of a global sea level increase anticipated over the next 100 yr. While not being a dominant effect, amplitudes of long-period ηib changes are large enough to be included in future estimates of climate-related regional sea level change. Increasing the vertically integrated atmospheric CO2 content by 4 and 12 kg m-2 (on global average), in response to doubling and quadrupling atmospheric CO2 concentrations, suggests associated reductions of global sea level by 0.6 and 1.7 cm, respectively. The differences between two different model solutions are significant, especially in the Southern Ocean, where they show significantly different atmospheric mass and pressure distributions, and at low latitudes, where differences resemble the contribution of increased moisture content added to the inverted-barometer (IB) effect in the MPI-M solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extratropical SSTs can be influenced by the “reemergence mechanism,” whereby thermal anomalies in the deep winter mixed layer persist at depth through summer and are then reentrained into the mixed layer in the following winter. The impact of reemergence in the North Atlantic Ocean (NAO) upon the climate system is investigated using an atmospheric general circulation model coupled to a mixed layer ocean/thermodynamic sea ice model. The dominant pattern of thermal anomalies below the mixed layer in summer in a 150-yr control integration is associated with the North Atlantic SST tripole forced by the NAO in the previous winter as indicated by singular value decomposition (SVD). To isolate the reemerging signal, two additional 60-member ensemble experiments were conducted in which temperature anomalies below 40 m obtained from the SVD analysis are added to or subtracted from the control integration. The reemerging signal, given by the mean difference between the two 60-member ensembles, causes the SST anomaly tripole to recur, beginning in fall, amplifying through January, and persisting through the following spring. The atmospheric response to these SST anomalies resembles the circulation that created them the previous winter but with reduced amplitude (10–20 m at 500 mb per °C), modestly enhancing the winter-to-winter persistence of the NAO. Changes in the transient eddies and their interactions with the mean flow contribute to the large-scale equivalent barotropic response throughout the troposphere. The latter can also be attributed to the change in occurrence of intrinsic weather regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A synoptic climatological weather classification scheme incorporating both surface and upper-air data is developed for the central United States based on an automated two-step cluster analysis. It employs daily NCEP–NCAR reanalysis data over all seasons of 57 yr (1948–2004) in creating synoptic types from surface and upper-air (925, 850, 700, and 500 hPa) temperature and humidity data as well as sea level pressure, geopotential heights, and winds aloft. The cluster analysis creates 10 synoptic types exhibiting distinct seasonal preferences, with three each that occur primarily in summer and winter, and four that occur primarily in winter and the transition seasons, particularly spring. The typing scheme generates synoptic patterns largely characterized by distinctive surface circulations, baroclinic vertical structure, and thermal advection. Interannual variations occur in the frequencies of the synoptic types, some of which are out of phase with each other. The annual frequencies of two winter synoptic types, associated respectively with strong zonal and meridional flow, are highly correlated (r ≫ 0.63–0.73) to the phase of the Pacific–North American teleconnection pattern, while Niño-3.4 equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures are linked to a synoptic type producing low pressure around the Gulf Coast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four climate system models are chosen here for an analysis of ENSO amplitude changes in 4 × CO2 climate change projections. Despite the large changes in the tropical Pacific mean state, the changes in ENSO amplitude are highly model dependant. To investigate why similar mean state changes lead to very different ENSO amplitude changes, the characteristics of sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) variability simulated in two coupled general circulation models (CGCMs) are analyzed: the Meteorological Research Institute (MRI) and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) models. The skewed distribution of tropical Pacific SSTA simulated in the MRI model suggests the importance of nonlinearities in the ENSO physics, whereas the GFDL model lies in the linear regime. Consistent with these differences in ENSO regime, the GFDL model is insensitive to the mean state changes, whereas the MRI model is sensitive to the mean state changes associated with the 4 × CO2 scenario. Similarly, the low-frequency modulation of ENSO amplitude in the GFDL model is related to atmospheric stochastic forcing, but in the MRI model the amplitude modulation is insensitive to the noise forcing. These results suggest that the understanding of changes in ENSO statistics among various climate change projections is highly dependent on whether the model ENSO is in the linear or nonlinear regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate model simulations of the latter part of the twentieth century indicate a warming of the troposphere that is equal to or larger than the warming at the surface, while satellite observations from the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) indicate little warming of the troposphere relative to surface observations. Recently, Fu et al. proposed a new approach to retrieving free tropospheric temperature trends from MSU data that better accounts for stratospheric cooling, which contaminates the tropospheric signal and leads to a smaller trend in tropospheric warming. In this study, climate model simulations are used as a self-consistent dataset to test these retrieval algorithms. The two methods of retrieving tropospheric temperature trends are applied to three climate model simulations of the twentieth century. The Fu et al. algorithm is found to be in very good agreement with the model-simulated tropospheric warming, indicating that it accurately accounts for cooling from the lower stratosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate during the Maunder Minimum is compared with current conditions in GCM simulations that include a full stratosphere and parameterized ozone response to solar spectral irradiance variability and trace gas changes. The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Global Climate/Middle Atmosphere Model (GCMAM) coupled to a q-flux/mixed-layer model is used for the simulations, which begin in 1500 and extend to the present. Experiments were made to investigate the effect of total versus spectrally varying solar irradiance changes; spectrally varying solar irradiance changes on the stratospheric ozone/climate response with both preindustrial and present trace gases; and the impact on climate and stratospheric ozone of the preindustrial trace gases and aerosols by themselves. The results showed that 1) the Maunder Minimum cooling relative to today was primarily associated with reduced anthropogenic radiative forcing, although the solar reduction added 40% to the overall cooling. There is no obvious distinguishing surface climate pattern between the two forcings. 2) The global and tropical response was greater than 1°C, in a model with a sensitivity of 1.2°C (W m[sup -2] )[sup -1] . To reproduce recent low-end estimates would require a sensitivity one-fourth as large. 3) The global surface temperature change was similar when using the total and spectral irradiance prescriptions, although the tropical response was somewhat greater with the former, and the stratospheric response greater with the latter. 4) Most experiments produce a relative negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation/Arctic Oscillation (NAO/AO) during the Maunder Minimum, with both solar and anthropogenic forcing equally capable, associated with the tropical cooling and relative poleward Eliassen–Palm (EP) flux refraction. 5) A full stratosphere appeared to be necessary for the negative AO/NAO phase, as was the case with this model for global warming experiments, unless the cooling was very large, while the ozone response played a minor role and did not influence surface temperature significantly. 6) Stratospheric ozone was most affected by the difference between present-day and preindustrial atmospheric composition and chemistry, with increases in the upper and lower stratosphere during the Maunder Minimum. While the estimated UV reduction led to ozone decreases, this was generally less important than the anthropogenic effect except in the upper midstratosphere, as judged by two different ozone photochemistry schemes. 7) The effect of the reduced solar irradiance on stratospheric ozone and on climate was similar in Maunder Minimum and current atmospheric conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global-scale transport properties of the NCEP reanalysis winds for the period from 1979 to 1997 are compared to a standard simulation with version 3 of the NCAR Community Climate Model (CCM3) forced by observed sea surface temperatures for the same period. The transport properties of each dataset are defined by the climatological Green's function for the mass conservation equation for a conserved, passive tracer. Characterizing the atmospheric circulation in terms of material transport provides a very different view of the circulation than standard Eulerian-mean statistics. The Green's functions are estimated from large numbers of Lagrangian (kinematic) particle trajectories computed by using the NCEP and CCM3 resolved winds. Generally the Green's functions computed from the two datasets agree well. The transport circulation is dominated by two thermally direct cells, one in each hemisphere. There is a substantial seasonal cycle in the transport, particularly in the Tropics. From a transport point of view, the atmosphere can be divided into three regions: the Southern Hemisphere extratropics, the Tropics, and the Northern Hemisphere extratropics. Particle dispersion within each region is relatively rapid, while exchange between the regions is slower. There are partial barriers to transport between the Tropics and extratropics. Differences between the transport characteristics of NCEP and CCM3 are most noticeable in the Tropics, where CCM3 has stronger subsidence in the ITCZ compared to NCEP. The transport circulation is slightly faster in NCEP than in CCM3. Interhemispheric transport rates computed from the Green's functions are compared with measurements of long-lived trace species from the Atmospheric Lifetime Experiment/Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (ALE/GAGE) network. The ALE/GAGE station data for the northern and southern extratropics give an interhemispheric time lag of ∼1.8 yr for long-lived tracers such as CFCs. Fitting the transport data to a three-box model gives interhemispheric time lags of ∼1.8 and ∼2 yr, respectively, for NCEP and CCM3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]