Climate Dynamics Group
at the University of California, Santa Cruz

The influence of climate feedbacks on regional hydrological changes under warming is poorly understood. Here, a moist energy balance model (MEBM) with a Hadley Cell parameterization is used to isolate the influence of climate feedbacks on changes in zonal-mean precipitation-minus-evaporation (P-E) under greenhouse-gas forcing. It is shown that cloud feedbacks act to narrow bands of tropical P-E and increase P-E in the deep tropics. The surface-albedo feedback shifts the location of maximum tropical P-E and increases P-E in the polar regions. The intermodel spread in the P-E changes associated with feedbacks arises mainly from cloud feedbacks, with the lapse-rate and surface-albedo feedbacks playing important roles in the polar regions. The P-E change associated with cloud feedback locking in the MEBM is similar to that of... read more →

Do changes in ocean heat transport (OHT) that occur with CO2 forcing, impact climate sensitivity in Earth system models? Changes in OHT with warming are ubiquitous in model experiments: when forced with CO2, such models exhibit declining poleward OHT in both hemispheres at most latitudes, which can persist over multicentennial time scales. To understand how changes in OHT may impact how the climate system responds to CO2 forcing, particularly climate sensitivity, we perform a series of Earth system model experiments in which we systematically perturb OHT (in a slab ocean, relative to its preindustrial control climatology) while simultaneously doubling atmospheric CO2. We find that equilibrium climate sensitivity varies substantially with OHT. Specifically, there is a 0.6 K decrease in global mean surface warming for every... read more →

We employ a moist energy balance model (MEBM), representing atmospheric heat transport as the diffusion of near‐surface moist static energy, to evaluate sources of uncertainty in the meridional pattern of surface warming. Given zonal mean patterns of radiative forcing, radiative feedbacks, and ocean heat uptake, the MEBM accurately predicts zonal mean warming as simulated by general circulation models under increased CO2. Over a wide range of latitudes, the MEBM captures approximately 90% of the variance in zonal mean warming across the general circulation models, with approximately 70% of the variance attributable to differences in radiative feedbacks alone. Partitioning the radiative feedbacks into individual components shows that the majority of the uncertainty in the meridional pattern of warming arises from uncertainty in cloud feedbacks. Isolating feedback... read more →

Radiative kernels for the GFDL AM2.1 in its aquaplanet configuration with a seasonal cycle are available for download from this repo and are described in the following paper: Feldl, N., S. Bordoni, and T. M. Merlis (2017), Coupled high-latitude climate feedbacks and their impact on atmospheric heat transport, Journal of Climate, 30, 189–201, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0324.1.

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Uncertainty in the spatial pattern of climate change is dominated by divergent predictions among climate models. Model differences are closely linked to their representation of climate feedbacks, that is, the additional radiative fluxes that are caused by changes in clouds, water vapour, surface albedo, and other factors, in response to an external climate forcing. Progress in constraining this uncertainty is therefore predicated on understanding how patterns of individual climate feedbacks aggregate into a regional and global climate response. Here we present a simple, moist energy balance model that combines regional feedbacks and the diffusion of both latent and sensible heat. Our model emulates the relationship between regional feedbacks and temperature response in more comprehensive climate models; the model can therefore be used to understand how... read more →

The effect of ocean heat uptake (OHU) on transient global warming is studied in a multimodel framework. Simple heat sinks are prescribed in shallow aquaplanet ocean mixed layers underlying atmospheric general circulation models independently and combined with CO2 forcing. Sinks are localized to either tropical or high latitudes, representing distinct modes of OHU found in coupled simulations. Tropical OHU produces modest cooling at all latitudes, offsetting only a fraction of CO2 warming. High‐latitude OHU produces three times more global mean cooling in a strongly polar‐amplified pattern. Global sensitivities in each scenario are set primarily by large differences in local shortwave cloud feedbacks, robust across models. Differences in atmospheric energy transport set the pattern of temperature change. Results imply that global and regional warming rates depend... read more →

The climate feedback framework partitions the radiative response to climate forcing into contributions from individual atmospheric processes. The goal of this study is to understand the closure of the energy budget in as much detail and precision as possible, within as clean an experimental setup as possible. Radiative kernels and radiative forcing are diagnosed for an aquaplanet simulation under perpetual equinox conditions. The role of the meridional structure of feedbacks, heat transport, and nonlinearities in controlling the local climate response is characterized. Results display a combination of positive subtropical feedbacks and polar amplified warming. These two factors imply a critical role for transport and nonlinear effects, with the latter acting to substantially reduce global climate sensitivity. At the hemispheric scale, a rich picture emerges: anomalous... read more →

The spatial pattern of climate feedbacks depends on how the feedbacks are defined. We employ an idealized aquaplanet simulation with radiative kernels diagnosed for the precise model setup and characterize the meridional structure of feedbacks under four different definitions: local feedbacks, global feedbacks, nondimensional feedback factors, and relative humidity feedbacks. First, the spatial pattern of the reference response (i.e., the Planck feedback) is found to vary with definition, largely as a consequence of polar‐amplified warming, which affects other high‐latitude feedbacks as well. Second, locally defined feedbacks allow for decomposition of the surface temperature response as a function of feedbacks, forcing, and heat transport. Third, different insights into the dynamical and thermodynamical underpinnings of the subtropical moisture response are gained by comparing different versions of humidity... read more →