Internal variability of Earth’s energy budget simulated by CMIP5 climate models

Palmer, Matthew D.; McNeall, Doug

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/3/034016

Cited by 111 publications

(108 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(27 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

100

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This is similar to the findings of Palmer and McNeall (2014). However, Hist shows a positive but low correlation between TOA and surface temperature, indicating that solar variations and volcanic eruptions (and possibly aerosol emissions) influence this model experiment.…”

Section: Likelihood Of Hiatus Periodssupporting

confidence: 87%

Global and regional surface cooling in a warming climate: a multi-model analysis

Medhaug

Drange

2015

Clim Dyn

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

to variations in global surface temperature. The likelihood of decadal-scale non-warming periods decrease with global warming, firstly at the low latitude region stretching eastward from the tropical Atlantic towards the western Pacific. The North Atlantic and Southern Oceans have largest likelihood of non-warming decades in a warming world. Keywords Hiatus · CMIP5 · Global warming · Decadal variability MotivationA central issue in climate research in recent years has been the apparent paradox that global surface temperature has not been increasing in tandem with increasing emissions of human-induced greenhouse gases. This paradox has generated a lot of attention among researchers (e.g., Easterling and Wehner 2009;Foster and Rahmstorf 2011;Katsman and van Oldenborgh 2011;Santer et al. 2011Santer et al. , 2014Trenberth and Fasullo 2013;Huber and Knutti 2014;Maher et al. 2014;Risbey et al. 2014;Watanabe et al. 2014) and the general public (Tollefson 2014). It has also been used to cast doubts about the reliability of climate research in general and climate models in particular (Showstack 2014) since the ensemble mean of the models do not reproduce the so-called surface temperature hiatus.A large suite of possible factors influencing the recent hiatus in the global surface temperature have been identified, including: the possibility of too-high model sensitivity to increased greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing (Flato et al. 2013); decadal-scale ocean uptake and storage of heat in the Pacific Ocean (e.g., Meehl et al. 2011;Kosaka and Xie 2013;Meehl et al. 2013;Trenberth and Fasullo 2013;England et al. 2014;Hu et al. 2015), in the Atlantic Ocean Abstract Instrumental temperature records show that the global climate may experience decadal-scale periods without warming despite a long-term warming trend. We analysed 17 global climate models participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), identifying the likelihood and duration of periods without warming in the four Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5, together with the preindustrial control and historical simulations. We find that non-warming periods may last 10, 15 and 30 years for RCP8.5, RCP6.0 and RCP4.5, respectively. In the models, anomalous ocean heat uptake and storage are the main factors explaining the decadalscale surface temperature hiatus periods. The low-latitude East Pacific Ocean is a key region for these variations, acting in tandem with basin-scale anomalies in the sea level pressure. During anomalously cold decades, roughly 35-50 % of the heat anomalies in the upper 700 m of the ocean are located in the Pacific Ocean, and 25 % in the Atlantic Ocean. Decadal-scale ocean heat anomalies, integrated over the upper 700 m, have a magnitude of about 7.5 × 10 21 J. This is comparable to the ocean heat uptake needed to maintain a 10 year period without increasing surface temperature under global warming. On sub-decadal time scales the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern Oceans all have the a...

show abstract

Section: Likelihood Of Hiatus Periodssupporting

confidence: 87%

Global and regional surface cooling in a warming climate: a multi-model analysis

Medhaug

Drange

2015

Clim Dyn

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Ocean heat content changes are directly related to top of the atmosphere net radiation fluxes [51]. Allan et al [52] used atmospheric reanalysis and twentieth century simulations to extend the CERES satellite radiation observations of the Earth's global energy balance (anchored to the estimates of ocean energy uptake; Loeb et al [53]) back to the 1980s.…”

Section: Sea Level Contributions Steric Sea Level Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Progress in Understanding and Projecting Regional and Global Mean Sea Level Change

Clark

Church

Gregory

et al. 2015

Curr Clim Change Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Considerable progress has been made in understanding the present and future regional and global sea level in the 2 years since the publication of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here, we evaluate how the new results affect the AR5's assessment of (i) historical sea level rise, including attribution of that rise and implications for the sea level budget, (ii) projections of the components and of total global mean sea level (GMSL), and (iii) projections of regional variability and emergence of the anthropogenic signal. In each of these cases, new work largely provides additional evidence in support of the AR5 assessment, providing greater confidence in those findings. Recent analyses confirm the twentieth century sea level rise, with some analyses showing a slightly smaller rate before 1990 and some a slightly larger value than reported in the AR5. There is now more evidence of an acceleration in the rate of rise. Ongoing ocean heat uptake and associated thermal expansion have continued since 2000, and are consistent with ocean thermal expansion reported in the AR5. A significant amount of heat is being stored deeper in the water column, with a larger rate of heat uptake since 2000 compared to the previous decades and with the largest storage in the Southern Ocean. The first formal detection studies for ocean thermal expansion and glacier mass loss since the AR5 have confirmed the AR5 finding of a significant anthropogenic contribution to sea level rise over the last 50 years. New projections of glacier loss from two regions suggest smaller contributions to GMSL rise from these regions than in studies assessed by the AR5; additional regional studies are required to further assess whether there are broader implications of these results. Mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet, primarily as a result of increased surface melting, and from the Antarctic Ice Sheet, primarily as a result of increased ice discharge, has accelerated. The largest estimates of acceleration in mass loss from the two ice sheets for 2003-2013 equal or exceed the acceleration of GMSL rise calculated from the satellite altimeter sea level record over the longer period of 1993-2014. However, when increased mass gain in land water storage and parts of East Antarctica, and decreased mass loss from glaciers in Alaska and some other regions are taken into account, the net acceleration in the ocean mass gain is consistent with the satellite altimeter record. New studies suggest that a marine ice sheet instability (MISI) may have been initiated in parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), but that it will affect only a limited number of ice streams in the twenty-first century. New projections of mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets by 2100, including a contribution from parts of WAIS undergoing unstable retreat, suggest a contribution that falls largely within the likely range (i.e., two thirds probability) of the AR5. These new results increase confidence in the AR5 likel...

show abstract

“…Analysis of climate model simulations has shown substantial vertical re-arrangement of ocean heat and highlighted Carton and Giese (2008) 19. UR025.4 (1989UR025.4 ( -2010 University of Reading 1°/4° NEMO3.2 OI (SLA/T/S/SST) Haines et al (2012) the global ocean's dominant role in Earth's energy budget on annual-to-decadal timescales (Palmer et al 2011;Palmer and McNeall 2014). Through combining the available ocean observations with OGCMs, ORAs may offer new insights into the processes of vertical heat re-arrangement and have also be used to derive estimates of Earth's energy imbalance (Loeb et al 2012;Trenberth et al 2014;Smith et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ocean heat content variability and change in an ensemble of ocean reanalyses

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

regions of the Pacific and Indian Oceans where the interannual variability of the ensemble mean exceeds ensemble spread, indicating that OHC variations are well-constrained by the available observations over the period [1993][1994][1995][1996][1997][1998][1999][2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009]. At deeper levels, the ORAs are less well-constrained by observations with the largest differences across the ensemble mostly associated with areas of high eddy kinetic energy, such as the Southern Ocean and boundary current regions. Spatial patterns of OHC change for the period 1997-2009 show good agreement in the upper 300 m and are characterized by a strong dipole pattern in the Pacific Ocean. There is less agreement in the patterns of change at deeper levels, potentially linked to differences in the representation of ocean dynamics, such as water mass formation processes. However, the Atlantic and Southern Oceans Abstract Accurate knowledge of the location and magnitude of ocean heat content (OHC) variability and change is essential for understanding the processes that govern decadal variations in surface temperature, quantifying changes in the planetary energy budget, and developing constraints on the transient climate response to external forcings. We present an overview of the temporal and spatial characteristics of OHC variability and change as represented by an ensemble of dynamical and statistical ocean reanalyses (ORAs). Spatial maps of the 0-300 m layer show large This paper is a contribution to the special issue on Ocean estimation from an ensemble of global ocean reanalyses, consisting of papers from the Ocean Reanalyses Intercomparsion Project (ORAIP), coordinated by CLIVAR-GSOP and GODAE OceanView. The special issue also contains specific studies using single reanalysis systems. The current work emphasizes the need to better observe the deep ocean, both for providing observational constraints for future ocean state estimation efforts and also to develop improved models and data assimilation methods.

show abstract

Internal variability of Earth’s energy budget simulated by CMIP5 climate models

Cited by 111 publications

References 27 publications

Global and regional surface cooling in a warming climate: a multi-model analysis

Global and regional surface cooling in a warming climate: a multi-model analysis

Recent Progress in Understanding and Projecting Regional and Global Mean Sea Level Change

Ocean heat content variability and change in an ensemble of ocean reanalyses

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About