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Model evidence for low‐level cloud feedback driving persistent changes in atmospheric circulation and regional hydroclimate
- Source :
- Geophysical Research Letters. 44:428-437
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2017.
-
Abstract
- Recent studies suggest that low clouds in the Pacific play an important role in the observed decadal climate variability and future climate change. In this study, we implement a novel modeling experiment designed to isolate how interactions between local and remote feedbacks associated with low cloud, SSTs, and the large-scale circulation play a significant role in the observed persistence of tropical Pacific SST and associated North American drought. The modeling approach involves the incorporation of observed patterns of satellite-derived shortwave cloud radiative effect (SWCRE) into the coupled model framework and is ideally suited for examining the role of local and large-scale coupled feedbacks and ocean heat transport in Pacific decadal variability. We show that changes in SWCRE forcing in eastern subtropical Pacific alone reproduces much of the observed changes in SST and atmospheric circulation over the past 16 years, including the observed changes in precipitation over much of the Western Hemisphere.
- Subjects :
- 010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Atmospheric circulation
Forcing (mathematics)
Subtropics
Hiatus
010502 geochemistry & geophysics
Atmospheric sciences
01 natural sciences
Cloud feedback
Cloud radiative effect
Geophysics
Climatology
General Earth and Planetary Sciences
Environmental science
sense organs
Precipitation
Shortwave
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 19448007 and 00948276
- Volume :
- 44
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........88294f068fb74224349a1d1e15124bdb