The ocean’s role in the transient response of climate to abrupt greenhouse gas forcing

We study the role of the ocean in setting the patterns and timescale of the transient response of the climate to anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing. A novel framework is set out which involves integration of an ocean-only model in which the anthropogenic temperature signal is forced from the surface by anomalous downwelling heat fluxes and damped at a rate controlled by a ‘climate feedback’ parameter. We observe a broad correspondence between the evolution of the anthropogenic temperature (T[subscript anthro]) in our simplified ocean-only model and that of coupled climate models perturbed by a quadrupling of CO[subscript 2]. This suggests that many of the mechanisms at work in fully coupled models are captured by our idealized ocean-only system. The framework allows us to probe the role of the ocean in delaying warming signals in the Southern Ocean and in the northern North Atlantic, and in amplifying the warming signal in the Arctic. By comparing active and passive temperature-like tracers we assess the degree to which changes in ocean circulation play a role in setting the distribution and evolution of T[subscript anthro]. The background ocean circulation strongly influences the large-scale patterns of ocean heat uptake and storage, such that T[subscript anthro] is governed by an advection/diffusion equation and weakly damped to the atmosphere at a rate set by climate feedbacks. Where warming is sufficiently small, for example in the Southern Ocean, changes in ocean circulation play a secondary role. In other regions, most noticeably in the North Atlantic, changes in ocean circulation induced by T[subscript anthro] are central in shaping the response.United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction ProgramMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Joint Program on the Science & Policy of Global ChangeJames S. McDonnell Foundation (Postdoctoral Fellowship

Dynamic adjustment of the ocean circulation to self-attraction and loading effects

The oceanic response to surface loading, such as that related to atmospheric pressure, freshwater exchange, and changes in the gravity field, is essential to our understanding of sea level variability. In particular, so-called self-attraction and loading (SAL) effects caused by the redistribution of mass within the land–atmosphere–ocean system can have a measurable impact on sea level. In this study, the nature of SAL-induced variability in sea level is examined in terms of its equilibrium (static) and nonequilibrium (dynamic) components, using a general circulation model that implicitly includes the physics of SAL. The additional SAL forcing is derived by decomposing ocean mass anomalies into spherical harmonics and then applying Love numbers to infer associated crustal displacements and gravitational shifts. This implementation of SAL physics incurs only a relatively small computational cost. Effects of SAL on sea level amount to about 10% of the applied surface loading on average but depend strongly on location. The dynamic component exhibits large-scale basinwide patterns, with considerable contributions from subweekly time scales. Departures from equilibrium decrease toward longer time scales but are not totally negligible in many places. Ocean modeling studies should benefit from using a dynamical implementation of SAL as used here