Contrasting impacts of radiative forcing in the Southern Ocean versus southern tropics on ITCZ position and energy transport in one GFDL climate model
Most current climate models suffer from pronounced cloud and radiation biases in the Southern Ocean (SO) and in the tropics. Using one GFDL climate model, this study investigates the migration of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) with prescribed top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) shortwave radiativ...
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Language: | English |
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Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0566.1 |
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ftncar:oai:drupal-site.org:articles_21728 2023-09-05T13:23:29+02:00 Contrasting impacts of radiative forcing in the Southern Ocean versus southern tropics on ITCZ position and energy transport in one GFDL climate model Xiang, Baoqiang (author) Zhao, Ming (author) Ming, Yi (author) Yu, Weidong (author) Kang, Sarah M. (author) 2018-07-01 https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0566.1 en eng Journal of Climate--J. Climate--0894-8755--1520-0442 articles:21728 ark:/85065/d70k2cc7 doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0566.1 Copyright 2018 American Meteorological Society (AMS). article Text 2018 ftncar https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0566.1 2023-08-14T18:47:42Z Most current climate models suffer from pronounced cloud and radiation biases in the Southern Ocean (SO) and in the tropics. Using one GFDL climate model, this study investigates the migration of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) with prescribed top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) shortwave radiative heating in the SO (50 degrees-80 degrees S) versus the southern tropics (ST; 0 degrees-20 degrees S). Results demonstrate that the ITCZ position response to the ST forcing is twice as strong as the SO forcing, which is primarily driven by the contrasting sea surface temperature (SST) gradient over the tropics; however, the mechanism for the formation of the SST pattern remains elusive. Energy budget analysis reveals that the conventional energetic constraint framework is inadequate in explaining the ITCZ shift in these two perturbed experiments. For both cases, the anomalous Hadley circulation does not contribute to transport the imposed energy from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere, given a positive mean gross moist stability in the equatorial region. Changes in the cross-equatorial atmospheric energy are primarily transported by atmospheric transient eddies when the anomalous ITCZ shift is most pronounced during December-May. The partitioning of energy transport between the atmosphere and ocean shows latitudinal dependence: the atmosphere and ocean play an overall equivalent role in transporting the imposed energy for the extratropical SO forcing, while for the ST forcing, the imposed energy is nearly completely transported by the atmosphere. This contrast originates from the different ocean heat uptake and also the different meridional scale of the anomalous ocean circulation. Article in Journal/Newspaper Southern Ocean OpenSky (NCAR/UCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) Southern Ocean Journal of Climate 31 14 5609 5628 |
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Open Polar |
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OpenSky (NCAR/UCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) |
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ftncar |
language |
English |
description |
Most current climate models suffer from pronounced cloud and radiation biases in the Southern Ocean (SO) and in the tropics. Using one GFDL climate model, this study investigates the migration of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) with prescribed top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) shortwave radiative heating in the SO (50 degrees-80 degrees S) versus the southern tropics (ST; 0 degrees-20 degrees S). Results demonstrate that the ITCZ position response to the ST forcing is twice as strong as the SO forcing, which is primarily driven by the contrasting sea surface temperature (SST) gradient over the tropics; however, the mechanism for the formation of the SST pattern remains elusive. Energy budget analysis reveals that the conventional energetic constraint framework is inadequate in explaining the ITCZ shift in these two perturbed experiments. For both cases, the anomalous Hadley circulation does not contribute to transport the imposed energy from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere, given a positive mean gross moist stability in the equatorial region. Changes in the cross-equatorial atmospheric energy are primarily transported by atmospheric transient eddies when the anomalous ITCZ shift is most pronounced during December-May. The partitioning of energy transport between the atmosphere and ocean shows latitudinal dependence: the atmosphere and ocean play an overall equivalent role in transporting the imposed energy for the extratropical SO forcing, while for the ST forcing, the imposed energy is nearly completely transported by the atmosphere. This contrast originates from the different ocean heat uptake and also the different meridional scale of the anomalous ocean circulation. |
author2 |
Xiang, Baoqiang (author) Zhao, Ming (author) Ming, Yi (author) Yu, Weidong (author) Kang, Sarah M. (author) |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
title |
Contrasting impacts of radiative forcing in the Southern Ocean versus southern tropics on ITCZ position and energy transport in one GFDL climate model |
spellingShingle |
Contrasting impacts of radiative forcing in the Southern Ocean versus southern tropics on ITCZ position and energy transport in one GFDL climate model |
title_short |
Contrasting impacts of radiative forcing in the Southern Ocean versus southern tropics on ITCZ position and energy transport in one GFDL climate model |
title_full |
Contrasting impacts of radiative forcing in the Southern Ocean versus southern tropics on ITCZ position and energy transport in one GFDL climate model |
title_fullStr |
Contrasting impacts of radiative forcing in the Southern Ocean versus southern tropics on ITCZ position and energy transport in one GFDL climate model |
title_full_unstemmed |
Contrasting impacts of radiative forcing in the Southern Ocean versus southern tropics on ITCZ position and energy transport in one GFDL climate model |
title_sort |
contrasting impacts of radiative forcing in the southern ocean versus southern tropics on itcz position and energy transport in one gfdl climate model |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0566.1 |
geographic |
Southern Ocean |
geographic_facet |
Southern Ocean |
genre |
Southern Ocean |
genre_facet |
Southern Ocean |
op_relation |
Journal of Climate--J. Climate--0894-8755--1520-0442 articles:21728 ark:/85065/d70k2cc7 doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0566.1 |
op_rights |
Copyright 2018 American Meteorological Society (AMS). |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0566.1 |
container_title |
Journal of Climate |
container_volume |
31 |
container_issue |
14 |
container_start_page |
5609 |
op_container_end_page |
5628 |
_version_ |
1776204063318212608 |