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Changes of the Tropical Tropopause Layer under Global Warming
- Source :
- Journal of Climate. 30:1245-1258
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- American Meteorological Society, 2017.
-
Abstract
- This paper investigates changes in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) in response to carbon dioxide increase and surface warming separately in an atmospheric general circulation model, finding that both effects lead to a warmer tropical tropopause. Surface warming also results in an upward shift of the tropopause. A detailed heat budget analysis is performed to quantify the contributions from different radiative and dynamic processes to changes in the TTL temperature. When carbon dioxide increases with fixed surface temperature, a warmer TTL mainly results from the direct radiative effect of carbon dioxide increase. With surface warming, the largest contribution to the TTL warming comes from the radiative effect of the warmer troposphere, which is partly canceled by the radiative effect of the moistening at the TTL. Strengthening of the stratospheric circulation following surface warming cools the lower stratosphere dynamically and radiatively via changes in ozone. These two effects are of comparable magnitudes. This circulation change is the main cause of temperature changes near 63 hPa but is weak near 100 hPa. Contributions from changes in convection and clouds are also quantified. These results illustrate the heat budget analysis as a useful tool to disentangle the radiative–dynamical–chemical–convective coupling at the TTL and to facilitate an understanding of intermodel difference.
- Subjects :
- Atmospheric Science
Ozone
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Global warming
Climate change
010502 geochemistry & geophysics
Atmospheric sciences
01 natural sciences
Troposphere
chemistry.chemical_compound
chemistry
Climatology
Carbon dioxide
Radiative transfer
Environmental science
Tropopause
Stratosphere
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15200442 and 08948755
- Volume :
- 30
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Climate
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........58405e5f240d45c113cecf1df6193198