Do southern ocean cloud feedbacks matter for 21st century warming?

Cloud phase improvements in a state-of-the-art climate model produce a large 1.5K increase in equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS, the surface warming in response to instantaneously doubled CO2) via extratropical shortwave cloud feedbacks. Here we show that the same model improvements produce only...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Other Authors: Frey, W. R. (author), Maroon, E. A. (author), Pendergrass, Angeline G. (author), Kay, J. E. (author)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2017
Subjects:
Southern Ocean
North Atlantic
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL076339
Description
Summary:Cloud phase improvements in a state-of-the-art climate model produce a large 1.5K increase in equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS, the surface warming in response to instantaneously doubled CO2) via extratropical shortwave cloud feedbacks. Here we show that the same model improvements produce only a small surface warming increase in a realistic 21st century emissions scenario. The small 21st century warming increase is attributed to extratropical ocean heat uptake. Southern Ocean mean-state circulation takes up heat while a slowdown in North Atlantic circulation acts as a feedback to slow surface warming. Persistent heat uptake by extratropical oceans implies that extratropical cloud biases may not be as important to 21st century warming as biases in other regions. Observational constraints on cloud phase and shortwave radiation that produce a large ECS increase do not imply large changes in 21st century warming.

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