Maintenance of polar stratospheric clouds in a moist stratosphere

Previous work has shown that polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) could have acted to substantially warm high latitude regions during past warm climates such as the Eocene (55 Ma). Using a simple model of stratospheric water vapor transport and polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) formation, we investigate the dependence of PSC optical depth on tropopause temperature, cloud microphysical parameters, stratospheric overturning, and tropospheric methane. We show that PSC radiative effects can help slow removal of water from the stratosphere via self-heating. However, we also show that the ability of PSCs to have a substantial impact on climate depends strongly on the PSC particle number density and the strength of the overturning circulation. Thus even a large source of stratospheric water vapor (e.g. from methane oxidation) will not result in substantial PSC radiative effects unless PSC ice crystal number density is high compared to most current observations, and stratospheric overturning (which modulates polar stratospheric temperatures) is low. These results are supported by analysis of a series of runs of the NCAR WACCM model with methane concentrations varying up to one thousand times present levels

Potential climatic transitions with profound impact on Europe

We discuss potential transitions of six climatic subsystems with large-scale impact on Europe, sometimes denoted as tipping elements. These are the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica, the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, Arctic sea ice, Alpine glaciers and northern hemisphere stratospheric ozone. Each system is represented by co-authors actively publishing in the corresponding field. For each subsystem we summarize the mechanism of a potential transition in a warmer climate along with its impact on Europe and assess the likelihood for such a transition based on published scientific literature. As a summary, the ‘tipping’ potential for each system is provided as a function of global mean temperature increase which required some subjective interpretation of scientific facts by the authors and should be considered as a snapshot of our current understanding. <br/

Multimodel projections of stratospheric ozone in the 21st century

Simulations from eleven coupled chemistry-climate models (CCMs) employing nearly identical forcings have been used to project the evolution of stratospheric ozone throughout the 21st century. The model-to-model agreement in projected temperature trends is good, and all CCMs predict continued, global mean cooling of the stratosphere over the next 5 decades, increasing from around 0.25 K/decade at 50 hPa to around 1 K/ decade at 1 hPa under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A1B scenario. In general, the simulated ozone evolution is mainly determined by decreases in halogen concentrations and continued cooling of the global stratosphere due to increases in greenhouse gases (GHGs). Column ozone is projected to increase as stratospheric halogen concentrations return to 1980s levels. Because of ozone increases in the middle and upper stratosphere due to GHGinduced cooling, total ozone averaged over midlatitudes, outside the polar regions, and globally, is projected to increase to 1980 values between 2035 and 2050 and before lower stratospheric halogen amounts decrease to 1980 values. In the polar regions the CCMs simulate small temperature trends in the first and second half of the 21st century in midwinter. Differences in stratospheric inorganic chlorine (Cly) among the CCMs are key to diagnosing the intermodel differences in simulated ozone recovery, in particular in the Antarctic. It is found that there are substantial quantitative differences in the simulated Cly, with the October mean Antarctic Cly peak value varying from less than 2 ppb to over 3.5 ppb in the CCMs, and the date at which the Cly returns to 1980 values varying from before 2030 to after 2050. There is a similar variation in the timing of recovery of Antarctic springtime column ozone back to 1980 values. As most models underestimate peak Cly near 2000, ozone recovery in the Antarctic could occur even later, between 2060 and 2070. In the Arctic the column ozone increase in spring does not follow halogen decreases as closely as in the Antarctic, reaching 1980 values before Arctic halogen amounts decrease to 1980 values and before the Antarctic. None of the CCMs predict future large decreases in the Arctic column ozone. By 2100, total column ozone is projected to be substantially above 1980 values in all regions except in the tropics

Beyond equilibrium climate sensitivity

ISSN:1752-0908ISSN:1752-089

On the diagnosis of climate sensitivity using observations of fluctuations

It has been shown that lag-covariance based statistical measures, suggested by the Fluctuation Dissipation Theorem (FDT), may allow estimation of climate sensitivity in a climate model. Recently Schwartz (2007) has used measures of the decay of autocorrelation in a global surface temperature time series to estimate the real world climate sensitivity. Here we use a simple climate model, and analysis of archived coupled climate model output from the IPCC AR4 runs, for which the climate sensitivity is known, to test the utility of this approach. Our analysis of these archived model output data show that estimates of climate sensitivity derived from century-long time scales typically grossly underestimate the models&apos; true climate sensitivity. We analyze the behavior of the simple model with adjustable heat capacity in two surface layers, subject to various stochastic forcings and for various climate sensitivities, modulated by albedo and water vapor feedbacks. We use our simple climate model to demonstrate: &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; 1. that a much longer time series would be required to accurately diagnose the earth&apos;s climate sensitivity than is presently available &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; 2. that for shorter time series there is a systematic bias towards underpredicting climate sensitivity, &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; 3. that the addition of a second heat reservoir weakly coupled to the first greatly reduces the decorrelation timescale of short temperature time series produced by the model, aggravating the tendency to underestimate climate sensitivity, and &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; 4. that because of this it is possible to have a selection of models in which the climate sensitivity is inversely related to the decorrelation time scale, as is true for the IPCC models

Weather response to a large wind turbine array

Electrical generation by wind turbines is increasing rapidly, and has been projected to satisfy 15% of world electric demand by 2030. The extensive installation of wind farms would alter surface roughness and significantly impact the atmospheric circulation due to the additional surface roughness forcing. This forcing could be changed deliberately by adjusting the attitude of the turbine blades with respect to the wind, which would enable the "management" of a large array of wind turbines. Using a General Circulation Model (GCM), we represent a continent-scale wind farm as a distributed array of surface roughness elements. Here we show that initial disturbances caused by a step change in roughness grow within four and a half days such that the flow is altered at synoptic scales. The growth rate of the induced perturbations is largest in regions of high atmospheric instability. For a roughness change imposed over North America, the induced perturbations involve substantial changes in the track and development of cyclones over the North Atlantic, and the magnitude of the perturbations rises above the level of forecast uncertainty