Clouds, Circulation, and Climate Sensitivity in a Radiative-Convective Equilibrium Channel Model

被引:72
作者
Cronin, Timothy W. [1 ]
Wing, Allison A. [2 ,3 ]
机构
[1] MIT, Dept Earth Atmospher & Planetary Sci, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
[2] Columbia Univ, Lamont Doherty Earth Observ, Palisades, NY USA
[3] Florida State Univ, Dept Earth Ocean & Atmospher Sci, Tallahassee, FL 32306 USA
基金
美国国家科学基金会;
关键词
clouds; climate sensitivity; self-aggregation; convection; radiative-convective equilibrium; tropical circulation; TROPICAL CIRCULATION; SURFACE-TEMPERATURE; SELF-AGGREGATION; ATMOSPHERE MODEL; RESOLVING MODEL; CHANGING CO2; FEEDBACKS; SIMULATIONS; PRECIPITATION; OCEAN;
D O I
10.1002/2017MS001111
中图分类号
P4 [大气科学(气象学)];
学科分类号
070601 [气象学];
摘要
Tropical cloud and circulation changes are large sources of uncertainty in future climate change. This problem owes partly to the scale separation between large-scale tropical dynamics (similar to 10(4) km) and convective dynamics (similar to 1 km), which generally requires parameterizing convection in models that resolve large-scale dynamics, or parameterizing (or omitting) large-scale dynamics in models that permit convection. Here we discuss simulations of radiative-convective equilibrium (RCE) across a wide range of surface temperatures in long-channel geometry-where the domain size and resolution marginally resolve both large-scale dynamics and convection. Self-aggregation of convection in these simulations spontaneously produces realistic dynamical regimes of large-scale vertical motion. The circulation weakens with surface warming but changes in the degree of self-aggregation depend on the metric that is used; there is no obvious trend in aggregation with warming. Surface warming causes an upward shift and decrease in area of high clouds, and a sharp decline in midlevel clouds, but no systematic trend in low cloud cover. We introduce a method for approximate radiative kernel feedback analysis in RCE, and apply it to both simulations in long-channel geometry and in a smaller square domain. The kernel-corrected cloud feedback is positive but its magnitude varies across temperatures. Compared to simulations that do not have aggregation, there is a more negative net feedback due to the effects of aggregation on relative humidity and cloud cover. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that self-aggregation moderately reduces climate sensitivity.
引用
收藏
页码:2883 / 2905
页数:23
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