Climatological Relationship between Warm Season Atmospheric Rivers and Heavy Rainfall over East Asia

Eddy transport of atmospheric water vapor from the tropics is important for rainfall and related natural disasters in the middle latitudes. Atmospheric rivers (ARs), intense moisture plumes that are typically associated with extratropical cyclones, often produce heavy precipitation upon encountering topography on the west coasts of mid-latitude North America and Europe. ARs also occur over the northwestern Pacific and sometimes cause floods and landslides over East Asia, but the climatological relationship between ARs and heavy rainfall in this region remains unclear. Here we evaluate the contribution of ARs to the hydrological cycle over East Asia using high-resolution daily rainfall observations and an atmospheric reanalysis during 1958-2007. Despite their low occurrence, ARs account for 14-44 % of the total rainfall and 20-90 % of extreme heavy-rainfall events during spring, summer, and autumn. AR-related extreme rainfall is especially pronounced over western-to-southeastern slopes of terrains over the Korean Peninsula and Japan, owing to strong orographic effects and a stable direction of low-level moisture flows. A strong relationship between warm-season AR heavy rainfall and preceding-winter El Niño is identified since the 1970s, suggesting the potential of predicting heavy-rainfall risk over Korea and Japan at seasonal leads

Atmospheric Rivers over the Northwestern Pacific: Climatology and Interannual Variability

Atmospheric rivers (ARs), conduits of intense water vapor transport in the midlatitudes, are critically important for water resources and heavy rainfall events over the west coast of North America, Europe, and Africa. ARs are also frequently observed over the northwestern Pacific (NWP) during boreal summer but have not been studied comprehensively. Here the climatology, seasonal variation, interannual variability, and predictability of NWP ARs (NWPARs) are examined by using a large ensemble, high-resolution atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) simulation and a global atmospheric reanalysis. The AGCM captures general characteristics of climatology and variability compared to the reanalysis, suggesting a strong sea surface temperature (SST) effect on NWPARs. The summertime NWPAR occurrences are tightly related to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the preceding winter through Indo–western Pacific Ocean capacitor (IPOC) effects. An enhanced East Asian summer monsoon and a low-level anticyclonic anomaly over the tropical western North Pacific in the post–El Niño summer reinforce low-level water vapor transport from the tropics with increased occurrence of NWPARs. The strong coupling with ENSO and IPOC indicates a high predictability of anomalous summertime NWPAR activity

Seasonal modulation of the Asian summer monsoon between the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age: a multi model study

Instrumental and proxy records indicate remarkable global climate variability over the last millennium, influenced by solar irradiance, Earth’s orbital parameters, volcanic eruptions and human activities. Numerical model simulations and proxy data suggest an enhanced Asian summer monsoon during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) compared to the Little Ice Age (LIA). Using multiple climate model simulations, we show that anomalous seasonal insolation over the Northern Hemisphere due to a long cycle of orbital parameters results in a modulation of the Asian summer monsoon transition between the MWP and LIA. Ten climate model simulations prescribing historical radiative forcing that includes orbital parameters consistently reproduce an enhanced MWP Asian monsoon in late summer and a weakened monsoon in early summer. Weakened, then enhanced Northern Hemisphere insolation before and after June leads to a seasonally asymmetric temperature response over the Eurasian continent, resulting in a seasonal reversal of the signs of MWP–LIA anomalies in land–sea thermal contrast, atmospheric circulation, and rainfall from early to late summer. This seasonal asymmetry in monsoon response is consistently found among the different climate models and is reproduced by an idealized model simulation forced solely by orbital parameters. The results of this study indicate that slow variation in the Earth’s orbital parameters contributes to centennial variability in the Asian monsoon transition

Atlantic effects on recent decadal trends in global monsoon

Natural climate variability contributes to recent decadal climate trends. Specifically the trends during the satellite era since 1979 include Atlantic and Indian Ocean warming and Pacific cooling associated with phase shifts of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and enhanced global monsoon (GM) circulation and rainfall especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Here we evaluate effects of the oceanic changes on the global and regional monsoon trends by partial ocean temperature restoring experiments in a coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model. Via trans-basin atmosphere–ocean teleconnections, the Atlantic warming drives a global pattern of sea surface temperature change that resembles observations, giving rise to the enhanced GM. The tropical Atlantic warming and the resultant Indian Ocean warming favor subtropical deep-tropospheric warming in both hemispheres, resulting in the enhanced monsoon circulations and precipitation over North America, South America and North Africa. The extratropical North Atlantic warming makes an additional contribution to the monsoon enhancement via Eurasian continent warming and resultant land–sea thermal gradient over Asia. The results of this study suggest that the Atlantic multidecadal variability can explain a substantial part of global climate variability including the recent decadal trends of GM

Combined effects of recent Pacific cooling and Indian Ocean warming on the Asian monsoon

Recent research indicates that the cooling trend in the tropical Pacific Ocean over the past 15 years underlies the contemporaneous hiatus in global mean temperature increase. During the hiatus, the tropical Pacific Ocean displays a La Niña-like cooling pattern while sea surface temperature (SST) in the Indian Ocean has continued to increase. This SST pattern differs from the well-known La Niña-induced basin-wide cooling across the Indian Ocean on the interannual timescale. Here, based on model experiments, we show that the SST pattern during the hiatus explains pronounced regional anomalies of rainfall in the Asian monsoon region and thermodynamic effects due to specific humidity change are secondary. Specifically, Indo-Pacific SST anomalies cause convection to intensify over the tropical western Pacific, which in turn suppresses rainfall in mid-latitude East Asia through atmospheric teleconnection. Overall, the tropical Pacific SST effect opposes and is greater than the Indian Ocean SST effect

Robust cloud feedback over tropical land in a warming climate

Cloud-related radiative perturbations over land in a warming climate are of importance for human health, ecosystem, agriculture, and industry via solar radiation availability and local warming amplification. However, robustness and physical mechanisms responsible for the land cloud feedback were not examined sufficiently because of the limited contribution to uncertainty in global climate sensitivity. Here we show that cloud feedback in general circulation models over tropical land is robust, positive, and is relevant to atmospheric circulation change and thermodynamic constraint associated with water vapor availability. In a warming climate, spatial variations in tropospheric warming associated with climatological circulation pattern result in a general weakening of tropical circulation and a dynamic reduction of land cloud during summer monsoon season. Limited increase in availability of water vapor also reduces the land cloud. The reduction of land cloud depends on global-scale oceanic warming and is not sensitive to regional warming patterns. The robust positive feedback can contribute to the warming amplification and drying over tropical land in the future

Effectiveness and limitations of parameter tuning in reducing biases of top-of-atmosphere radiation and clouds in MIROC version 5

This study discusses how much of the biases in top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiation and clouds can be removed by parameter tuning in the present-day simulation of a climate model in the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) generation. We used output of a perturbed parameter ensemble (PPE) experiment conducted with an atmosphere–ocean general circulation model (AOGCM) without flux adjustment. The Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate version 5 (MIROC5) was used for the PPE experiment. Output of the PPE was compared with satellite observation data to evaluate the model biases and the parametric uncertainty of the biases with respect to TOA radiation and clouds. The results indicate that removing or changing the sign of the biases by parameter tuning alone is difficult. In particular, the cooling bias of the shortwave cloud radiative effect at low latitudes could not be removed, neither in the zonal mean nor at each latitude–longitude grid point. The bias was related to the overestimation of both cloud amount and cloud optical thickness, which could not be removed by the parameter tuning either. However, they could be alleviated by tuning parameters such as the maximum cumulus updraft velocity at the cloud base. On the other hand, the bias of the shortwave cloud radiative effect in the Arctic was sensitive to parameter tuning. It could be removed by tuning such parameters as albedo of ice and snow both in the zonal mean and at each grid point. The obtained results illustrate the benefit of PPE experiments which provide useful information regarding effectiveness and limitations of parameter tuning. Implementing a shallow convection parameterization is suggested as a potential measure to alleviate the biases in radiation and clouds

A review of progress towards understanding the transient global mean surface temperature response to radiative perturbation

The correct understanding of the transient response to external radiative perturbation is important for the interpretation of observed climate change, the prediction of near-future climate change, and committed warming under climate stabilization scenarios, as well as the estimation of equilibrium climate sensitivity based on observation data. It has been known for some time that the radiative damping rate per unit of global mean surface temperature increase varies with time, and this inconstancy affects the transient response. Knowledge of the equilibrium response alone is insufficient, but understanding the transient response of the global mean surface temperature has made rapid progress. The recent progress accompanies the relatively new concept of the efficacies of ocean heat uptake and forcing. The ocean heat uptake efficacy associates the temperature response induced by ocean heat uptake with equilibrium temperature response, and the efficacy of forcing compares the temperature response caused by non-CO2 forcing with that by CO2 forcing. In this review article, recent studies on these efficacies are discussed, starting from the classical global feedback framework and basis of the transient response. An attempt is made to structure different studies that emphasize different aspects of the transient response and to stress the relevance of those individual studies. The implications on the definition and computation of forcing and on the estimation of the equilibrium response in climate models are also discussed. Along with these discussions, examples are provided with MIROC climate model multi-millennial simulations

Large-scale features of Pliocene climate: results from the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project

Climate and environments of the mid-Pliocene warm period (3.264 to 3.025 Ma) have been extensively studied. Whilst numerical models have shed light on the nature of climate at the time, uncertainties in their predictions have not been systematically examined. The Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project quantifies uncertainties in model outputs through a coordinated multi-model and multi-model/data intercomparison. Whilst commonalities in model outputs for the Pliocene are clearly evident, we show substantial variation in the sensitivity of models to the implementation of Pliocene boundary conditions. Models appear able to reproduce many regional changes in temperature reconstructed from geological proxies. However, data/model comparison highlights that models potentially underestimate polar amplification. To assert this conclusion with greater confidence, limitations in the time-averaged proxy data currently available must be addressed. Furthermore, sensitivity tests exploring the known unknowns in modelling Pliocene climate specifically relevant to the high latitudes are essential (e.g. palaeogeography, gateways, orbital forcing and trace gasses). Estimates of longer-term sensitivity to CO2 (also known as Earth System Sensitivity; ESS), support previous work suggesting that ESS is greater than Climate Sensitivity (CS), and suggest that the ratio of ESS to CS is between 1 and 2, with a "best" estimate of 1.5