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Weakening of atmospheric information flow in a warming climate in the Community Climate System Model
Author(s) -
Deng Yi,
EbertUphoff Imme
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2013gl058646
Subject(s) - geopotential height , climatology , environmental science , climate model , predictability , climate change , greenhouse gas , atmospheric circulation , northern hemisphere , forcing (mathematics) , atmospheric model , abrupt climate change , transient climate simulation , downscaling , information flow , teleconnection , global warming , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , geology , effects of global warming , geography , precipitation , el niño southern oscillation , oceanography , linguistics , physics , philosophy , quantum mechanics
We introduce a new perspective of climate change by revealing the changing characteristics of atmospheric information flow in a warming climate. The key idea is to interpret large‐scale atmospheric dynamical processes as information flow around the globe and to identify the pathways of this information flow using a climate network based on causal discovery and graphical models. We construct such networks using the daily geopotential height data from the Community Climate System Model Version 4.0 (CCSM4.0)'s 20 th century climate simulation and 21 st century climate projection. We show that in the CCSM4.0 model under enhanced greenhouse gases (GHGs) forcing, prominent midlatitude information pathways in the midtroposphere weaken and shift poleward, while major tropical information pathways start diminishing. Averaged over the entire Northern Hemisphere, the atmospheric information flow weakens. The implications of this weakening for the interconnectivity among different geographical locations and for the intrinsic predictability of the atmosphere are discussed.