Water Vapor and the Dynamics of Climate Changes

Schneider, Tapio; O’Gorman, Paul A.; Levine, Xavier J.

doi:10.1029/2009rg000302

Cited by 402 publications

(388 citation statements)

References 148 publications

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“…Increasing atmospheric water vapor amounts under global warming will tend to increase MAPE, but, as seen earlier, the dry MAPE and nonconvective MAPE scale similarly, and therefore water vapor may not play a major role directly. Water vapor does however play a role in helping to determine the changes in the thermal structure of the atmosphere (8,22). There is a pronounced peak in warming in the tropical troposphere, leading to an increase in the southern hemispheric meridional temperature gradient and MAPE throughout the year (Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the varied response of the extratropical storm tracks to climate change

O’Gorman

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

134

101

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Transient eddies in the extratropical storm tracks are a primary mechanism for the transport of momentum, energy, and water in the atmosphere, and as such are a major component of the climate system. Changes in the extratropical storm tracks under global warming would impact these transports, the ocean circulation and carbon cycle, and society through changing weather patterns. I show that the southern storm track intensifies in the multimodel mean of simulations of 21st century climate change, and that the seasonal cycle of storm-track intensity increases in amplitude in both hemispheres. I use observations of the presentday seasonal cycle to confirm the relationship between storm-track intensity and the mean available potential energy of the atmosphere, and show how this quantitative relationship can be used to account for much of the varied response in storm-track intensity to global warming, including substantially different responses in simulations with different climate models. The results suggest that storm-track intensity is not related in a simple way to global-mean surface temperature, so that, for example, a stronger southern storm track in response to present-day global warming does not imply it was also stronger in hothouse climates of the past.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the varied response of the extratropical storm tracks to climate change

O’Gorman

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

134

101

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“…Satellite observations show that the integrated water content over the oceans follows the CCscaling with respect to the sea surface temperature (e.g. Stephens 1990) due to energetic constraint (Schneider et al 2010). Therefore the Mediterranean Sea is the primary source of humidity contributing to maintain the relative humidity constant over parts of the Euro-Mediterranean region.…”

Section: (S)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaling precipitation extremes with temperature in the Mediterranean: past climate assessment and projection in anthropogenic scenarios

et al. 2016

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temperature-precipitation extremes relationship displays a hook shape across the Mediterranean, with negative slope at high temperatures and a slope following Clausius-Clapeyron (CC)-scaling at low temperatures. The temperature at which the slope of the temperature-precipitation extreme relation sharply changes (or temperature break), ranges from about 20 °C in the western Mediterranean to <10 °C in Greece. In addition, this slope is always negative in the arid regions of the Mediterranean. The scaling of the simulated precipitation extremes is insensitive to oceanatmosphere coupling, while it depends very weakly on the resolution at high temperatures for short precipitation accumulation times. In future climate scenario simulations covering the 2070-2100 period, the temperature break shifts to higher temperatures by a value which is on average the mean regional temperature change due to global warming. AbstractIn this study we investigate the scaling of precipitation extremes with temperature in the Mediterranean region by assessing against observations the present day and future regional climate simulations performed in the frame of the HyMeX and MED-CORDEX programs. Over the 1979-2008 period, despite differences in quantitative precipitation simulation across the various models, the change in precipitation extremes with respect to temperature is robust and consistent. The spatial variability of the This paper is a contribution to the special issue on Med-CORDEX, an international coordinated initiative dedicated to the multi-component regional climate modelling (atmosphere, ocean, land surface, river) of the Mediterranean under the umbrella of HyMeX, CORDEX, and Med-CLIVAR and coordinated by Samuel Somot, Paolo Ruti, Erika Coppola, Gianmaria Sannino, Bodo Ahrens, and Gabriel Jordà. 3The slope of the simulated future temperature-precipitation extremes relationship is close to CC-scaling at temperatures below the temperature break, while at high temperatures, the negative slope is close, but somewhat flatter or steeper, than in the current climate depending on the model. Overall, models predict more intense precipitation extremes in the future. Adjusting the temperature-precipitation extremes relationship in the present climate using the CC law and the temperature shift in the future allows the recovery of the temperature-precipitation extremes relationship in the future climate. This implies negligible regional changes of relative humidity in the future despite the large warming and drying over the Mediterranean. This suggests that the Mediterranean Sea is the primary source of moisture which counteracts the drying and warming impacts on relative humidity in parts of the Mediterranean region.

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“…A slowing down of the overturning circulation with warming has previously been related to the different rates of increase of specific humidity and precipitation in response to a given forcing (e.g., Held and Soden 2006). While the accuracy of simple scaling arguments for the strength of the overturning circulation has been questioned (Schneider et al 2010;Merlis and Schneider 2011), many model simulations do show a decrease in magnitude of the resolved-scale pressure velocity in the tropics in their response to greenhousegas-induced warming (Knutson and Manabe 1995;Vecchi and Soden 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Upward Shift of the Atmospheric General Circulation under Global Warming: Theory and Simulations

Singh

O’Gorman

2012

Journal of Climate

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Many features of the general circulation of the atmosphere shift upward in response to warming in simulations of climate change with both general circulation models (GCMs) and cloud-system-resolving models. The importance of the upward shift is well known, but its physical basis and the extent to which it occurs coherently across variables are not well understood. A transformation is derived here that shows how an upward shift of a solution to the moist primitive equations gives a new approximate solution with higher tropospheric temperatures. According to the transformation, all variables shift upward with warming but with an additional modification to the temperature and a general weakening of the pressure velocity. The applicability of the vertical-shift transformation is explored using a hierarchy of models from adiabatic parcel ascents to comprehensive GCMs. The transformation is found to capture many features of the response to climate change in simulations with an idealized GCM, including the mid-and upper-tropospheric changes in lapse rate, relative humidity, and meridional wind. The transformation is less accurate when applied to simulations with more realistic GCMs, but it nonetheless captures some important features. Deviations from the simulated response are primarily due to the surface boundary conditions, which do not necessarily conform to the transformation, especially in the case of the zonal winds. The results allow for a physical interpretation of the upward shift in terms of the governing equations and suggest that it may be thought of as a coherent response of the general circulation of the mid-and upper troposphere.

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Water Vapor and the Dynamics of Climate Changes

Cited by 402 publications

References 148 publications

Understanding the varied response of the extratropical storm tracks to climate change

Understanding the varied response of the extratropical storm tracks to climate change

Scaling precipitation extremes with temperature in the Mediterranean: past climate assessment and projection in anthropogenic scenarios

Upward Shift of the Atmospheric General Circulation under Global Warming: Theory and Simulations

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