Regional cooling in the South Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean due to global warming

This study investigates processes leading to regional cooling in global warming experiments conducted with the NCAR fully coupled Community Climate System Model (CCSM3). While several previous studies have investigated regional cooling in the South Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean, the mechanism...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Other Authors: Kim, D.-H (author), Nakashiki, N. (author), Yoshida, Y. (author), Maruyama, K. (author), Bryan, Frank (author)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Geophysical Union 2005
Subjects:
Antarctic
Pacific
Ross Sea
Southern Ocean
The Antarctic
Antarc*
Online Access:http://nldr.library.ucar.edu/repository/collections/OSGC-000-000-005-306
https://doi.org/10.1029/2005GL023708
Description
Summary:This study investigates processes leading to regional cooling in global warming experiments conducted with the NCAR fully coupled Community Climate System Model (CCSM3). While several previous studies have investigated regional cooling in the South Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean, the mechanism leading to this response remains unclear. We find that changes in ocean circulation offer the key to understanding the regional cooling. The regional cooling in the South Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean, especially the area north of the Ross Sea, results mainly through an advective mechanism. The ocean topography contributes strongly to the change of ocean circulation through changes in bottom vortex stretching associated with a decrease in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current transport.

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