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The Dominant Contribution of Southern Ocean Heat Uptake to Time‐Evolving Radiative Feedback in CESM
Author(s) -
Lin YuanJen,
Hwang YenTing,
Lu Jian,
Liu Fukai,
Rose Brian E. J.
Publication year - 2021
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 - 10.1029/2021gl093302
Subject(s) - radiative transfer , climatology , environmental science , anomaly (physics) , radiative flux , atmospheric sciences , sea surface temperature , climate model , troposphere , global warming , climate change , geology , physics , oceanography , quantum mechanics , condensed matter physics
In most fully coupled climate models, the net radiative feedback magnitude decreases with time after abruptly quadrupling CO 2 . Hypotheses have been raised to explain the time dependence of radiative feedbacks, including the influence from surface warming pattern and ocean heat uptake (OHU) pattern. By using the Green's Function derived from pairs of simulations in the atmospheric model (CAM5) coupled with a slab‐ocean, with each simulation being forced by a localized surface heat flux anomaly, we evaluate the influences of regional OHU on transient surface warming pattern, accounting for the changes in radiative feedbacks. The attribution of the time‐evolving net radiative feedback highlights the remote impact from OHU over the Southern Ocean on tropical sea surface temperature. The time‐dependent weakening of OHU over the Southern Ocean gives rise to increasingly enhanced surface warming in southeastern Pacific, which leads to decreasing tropospheric stability and more positive cloud feedback decades after quadrupling CO 2 .