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Influences of local and remote conditions on tropical precipitation and its response to climate change

Journal of Climate, ISSN: 0894-8755, Vol: 33, Issue: 10, Page: 4045-4063
2020
  • 4
    Citations
  • 0
    Usage
  • 25
    Captures
  • 1
    Mentions
  • 0
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Citations
    4
    • Citation Indexes
      3
    • Policy Citations
      1
      • Policy Citation
        1
  • Captures
    25
  • Mentions
    1
    • Blog Mentions
      1
      • Blog
        1

Article Description

By comparing a single-column model (SCM) with closely related general circulation models (GCMs), precipitation changes that can be diagnosed from local changes in surface temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH) are separated from more complex responses. In the SCM setup, the large-scale tropical circulation is parameterized to respond to the surface temperature departure from a prescribed environment, following the weak temperature gradient (WTG) approximation and using the damped gravity wave (DGW) parameterization. The SCM is also forced with moisture variations. First, it is found that most of the present-day mean tropical rainfall and circulation pattern is associated with T and RH patterns. Climate change experiments with the SCM are performed, imposing separately surface warming and CO increase. The rainfall responses to future changes in sea surface temperature patterns and plant physiology are successfully reproduced, suggesting that these are direct responses to local changes in convective instability. However, the SCM increases oceanic rainfall too much, and fails to reproduce the land rainfall decrease, both of which are associated with uniform ocean warming. It is argued that remote atmospheric teleconnections play a crucial role in both weakening the atmospheric overturning circulation and constraining precipitation changes. Results suggest that the overturning circulation weakens, both as a direct local response to increased CO and in response to energy-imbalance driven exchanges between ascent and descent regions.

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