The Energetic Constraints on the Zonal Mean Atmospheric Circulations in the Tropics, Midlatitudes, and High Latitudes

• Main Author: Hwang, Yen-Ting
• Other Authors: Frierson, Dargan M. W.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: atmospheric energy transport; general circulation; global climate model; global warming; polar amplification; tropical precipitation; Atmospheric sciences; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1773/23475

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013 In this doctoral thesis, I have studied the processes that affect the atmospheric energy budget and their coupling relationships with atmospheric circulations. The equator-to-pole radiation gradient at the top of the atmosphere is the fundamental driver of atmospheric and oceanic circulations. Any anomaly in the energy budget due to variations in different climate components (such as clouds, aerosols, atmospheric properties, and land surfaces) will have an effect on the atmospheric and oceanic circulations and energy transport. Variations in the energy budget of extratropical regions have a non-local effect on tropical climate and vice versa. We first investigated climate components that affect the atmospheric energy budget and their coupled relationships with the atmospheric energy transport, using CMIP multi-model ensembles. We studied how individual components affect energy transport in three latitude bands: (1) at 70 degrees, where increasing poleward energy transport may cause polar amplification, (2) at 40 degrees, where eddies are the strongest, and (3) in the deep tropics, where global climate models (GCMs) do not agree on the changes in transport in global warming scenarios. In high latitudes, positive radiative effects from melting sea ice decrease the equator-to-pole temperature gradient and prevent poleward fluxes from increasing. Models that have more melting ice tend to predict a smaller increase in the energy transport, which is counterintuitive based on the argument that increasing poleward transport can lead to melting sea ice. The cooling effect of increasing low clouds over newly open ocean along the ice edge sharpens the temperature gradient and increases the energy transport in midlatitudes. Clouds and sea ice in the extratropics can also influence energy transport at the equator. We then shifted our focus to the tropical rain belt, built on the first part that demonstrated a directly linkage from hemispheric asymmetry of the atmospheric ...