Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models
Observations over the 20th century evidence no long-term warming in the subpolar North Atlantic (SPG). This region even experienced a rapid cooling around 1970, raising a debate over its potential reoccurrence. Here we assess the risk of future abrupt SPG cooling in 40 climate models from the fifth...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5330854 2023-05-15T17:29:28+02:00 Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models Sgubin, Giovanni Swingedouw, Didier Drijfhout, Sybren Mary, Yannick Bennabi, Amine 2017-02-15 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5330854/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28198383 https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14375 en eng Nature Publishing Group http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5330854/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28198383 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14375 Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ CC-BY Article Text 2017 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14375 2017-03-26T01:04:29Z Observations over the 20th century evidence no long-term warming in the subpolar North Atlantic (SPG). This region even experienced a rapid cooling around 1970, raising a debate over its potential reoccurrence. Here we assess the risk of future abrupt SPG cooling in 40 climate models from the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Contrary to the long-term SPG warming trend evidenced by most of the models, 17.5% of the models (7/40) project a rapid SPG cooling, consistent with a collapse of the local deep-ocean convection. Uncertainty in projections is associated with the models' varying capability in simulating the present-day SPG stratification, whose realistic reproduction appears a necessary condition for the onset of a convection collapse. This event occurs in 45.5% of the 11 models best able to simulate the observed SPG stratification. Thus, due to systematic model biases, the CMIP5 ensemble as a whole underestimates the chance of future abrupt SPG cooling, entailing crucial implications for observation and adaptation policy. Text North Atlantic PubMed Central (PMC) Nature Communications 8 1 |
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Article Sgubin, Giovanni Swingedouw, Didier Drijfhout, Sybren Mary, Yannick Bennabi, Amine Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
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Article |
description |
Observations over the 20th century evidence no long-term warming in the subpolar North Atlantic (SPG). This region even experienced a rapid cooling around 1970, raising a debate over its potential reoccurrence. Here we assess the risk of future abrupt SPG cooling in 40 climate models from the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Contrary to the long-term SPG warming trend evidenced by most of the models, 17.5% of the models (7/40) project a rapid SPG cooling, consistent with a collapse of the local deep-ocean convection. Uncertainty in projections is associated with the models' varying capability in simulating the present-day SPG stratification, whose realistic reproduction appears a necessary condition for the onset of a convection collapse. This event occurs in 45.5% of the 11 models best able to simulate the observed SPG stratification. Thus, due to systematic model biases, the CMIP5 ensemble as a whole underestimates the chance of future abrupt SPG cooling, entailing crucial implications for observation and adaptation policy. |
format |
Text |
author |
Sgubin, Giovanni Swingedouw, Didier Drijfhout, Sybren Mary, Yannick Bennabi, Amine |
author_facet |
Sgubin, Giovanni Swingedouw, Didier Drijfhout, Sybren Mary, Yannick Bennabi, Amine |
author_sort |
Sgubin, Giovanni |
title |
Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title_short |
Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title_full |
Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title_fullStr |
Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title_full_unstemmed |
Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title_sort |
abrupt cooling over the north atlantic in modern climate models |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5330854/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28198383 https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14375 |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5330854/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28198383 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14375 |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14375 |
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Nature Communications |
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