A simulation of the separate climate effects of middle-atmospheric and tropospheric CO(2) doubling

• Main Authors: Sigmond, M., Siegmund, P., Manzini, E., Kelder, H.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Arctic; Climate change
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002E-23B1-0; http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002E-23B3-C

The separate climate effects of middle-atmospheric and tropospheric CO(2) doubling have been simulated and analyzed with the ECHAM middle-atmosphere climate model. To this end, the CO(2) concentration has been separately doubled in the middle-atmosphere, the troposphere, and the entire atmosphere, and the results have been compared to a control run. During NH winter, the simulated uniformly doubled CO(2) climate shows an increase of the stratospheric residual circulation, a small warming in the Arctic lower stratosphere, a weakening of the zonal winds in the Arctic middle-atmosphere, an increase of the NH midlatitude tropospheric westerlies, and a poleward shift of the SH tropospheric westerlies. The uniformly doubled CO(2) response in most regions is approximately equal to the sum of the separate responses to tropospheric and middle-atmospheric CO(2) doubling. The increase of the stratospheric residual circulation can be attributed for about two-thirds to the tropospheric CO(2) doubling and one-third to the middle-atmospheric CO(2) doubling. This increase contributes to the Arctic lower-stratospheric warming and, through the thermal wind relationship, to the weakening of the Arctic middle-atmospheric zonal wind. The increase of the tropospheric NH midlatitude westerlies can be attributed mainly to the middle-atmospheric CO(2) doubling, indicating the crucial importance of the middle-atmospheric CO(2) doubling for the tropospheric climate change. Results from an additional experiment show that the CO(2) doubling above 10 hPa, which is above the top of many current GCMs, also causes significant changes in the tropospheric climate.