The Roles of Land and Orography on Precipitation and Ocean Circulation in Global Climate Models

• Main Author: Maroon, Elizabeth Allison
• Other Authors: Battisti, David S., Frierson, Dargan M W
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: climate dynamics; global climate models; intertropical convergence zone; meridional overturning circulation; Atmospheric sciences; Physical oceanography; Pacific; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1773/37022

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08 In this thesis, coupled and atmosphere-only global climate models are used to examine two large-scale climate asymmetries: the zonal asymmetry of tropical precipitation about the equator and the preference for sinking in the North Atlantic Ocean, but not in the North Pacific Ocean. The examination of these two climate asymmetries is performed using models of differing complexity. The first half of this dissertation discusses the influence of land on the distribution of tropical precipitation in idealized geometry models. A continent is added to the Northern Hemisphere subtropics of two aquaplanet models; annual mean insolation is prescribed and the albedo and longitudinal extent of the continent are varied. One of the models, GRaM, has gray-radiation physics with moist dynamics, while the other model, GFDL's AM2.1, has comprehensive physics. In the GRaM model, the pattern of the precipitation response is mostly related to decreased evaporation due to the now unsaturated surface. As the albedo of land is increased, precipitation shifts southward away from the hemisphere with less absorbed energy. In the AM2.1 model, there is a zonally-varying response in tropical precipitation due to the addition of land, but this response is not rubust in simulations that include a seasonal cycle of insolation. As albedo over land is increased, precipitation shifts southward zonally, just as in GRaM. When the width of the continent is increased, tropical precipitation shifts toward the continent, which indicates that continental width plays an important role in setting the distribution of tropical atmospheric overturning circulations. The second half of this dissertation examines the influence of Rocky Mountain orography on the location of Northern Hemisphere sinking of the oceanic meridional overturning circulation (MOC). Warren (1983) found that there is greater transport of salt into the high latitude North Atlantic than into the North Pacific, allowing water to sink in the ...