Wednesday, 26 March 2003: 11:45 AM
Solar forcing and coupled ocean-atmosphere dynamical response over the southern oceans
Ensemble experiments with a global coupled climate model
for the 20th century with time evolving
solar, greenhouse gas, sulfate aerosol (direct effect), and ozone
(tropospheric and stratospheric) forcing are analyzed to show that
solar forcing produces coupled dynamical
interactions over the southern ocean that intensity regional
tropical and subtropical precipitation
regimes over the first half of the century.
Solar forcing produces feedbacks involving temperature
gradient-driven atmospheric circulations that can alter clouds.
Over relatively cloud-free oceanic regions in the subtropics,
greater solar forcing in mid-century compared to early century
produces greater evaporation,
more moisture transport into the precipitation convergence zones,
intensified regional Hadley and Walker circulations, less clouds over
the subtropical ocean regions, and even more solar input.
Coupled dynamical interactions produce upper ocean heat content anomalies in
concert with positive SST anomalies that intensify precipitation
over the South Indian, South Pacific, and South Atlantic Convergence Zones.
Coupled regional responses are most evident when
the solar forcing occurs in concert with increased greenhouse gas forcing
of about the same magnitude over the first half of the century.
The latter is also altered by interaction with the solar forcing,
and the base state tropical SSTs are increased in the relatively cloud-free
subtropical regions of low level moisture divergence to fuel the
regional feedbacks induced by the spatially differentiated solar forcing.
Consequently, the greater solar forcing
acting in concert with increased GHGs
during the early 20th century produces
larger increases of tropical precipitation,
calculated as a residual for the solar forcing,
than for early century solar-only
forcing, even though the size of the solar forcing is the same.
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