A comparison of temperature and precipitation responses to different Earth radiation management geoengineering schemes

Earth radiation management has been suggested as a way to rapidly counteract global warming in the face of a lack of mitigation efforts, buying time and avoiding potentially catastrophic warming. We compare six different radiation management schemes that use surface, troposphere, and stratosphere interventions in a single climate model in which we projected future climate from 2020 to 2099 based on RCP4.5. We analyze the surface air temperature responses to determine how effective the schemes are at returning temperature to its 1986–2005 climatology and analyze precipitation responses to compare side effects. We find crop albedo enhancement is largely ineffective at returning temperature to its 1986–2005 climatology. Desert albedo enhancement causes excessive cooling in the deserts and severe shifts in tropical precipitation. Ocean albedo enhancement, sea-spray geoengineering, cirrus cloud thinning, and stratospheric SO2 injection have the potential to cool more uniformly, but cirrus cloud thinning may not be able to cool by much more than 1 K globally. We find that of the schemes potentially able to return surface air temperature to 1986–2005 climatology under future greenhouse gas warming, none has significantly less severe precipitation side effects than other schemes. Despite different forcing patterns, ocean albedo enhancement, sea-spray geoengineering, cirrus cloud thinning, and stratospheric SO2 injection all result in large scale tropical precipitation responses caused by Hadley cell changes and land precipitation changes largely driven by thermodynamic changes. Widespread regional scale changes in precipitation over land are significantly different from the 1986–2005 climatology and would likely necessitate significant adaptation despite geoengineering

An unexpected disruption of the atmospheric quasi-biennial oscillation

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from AAAS via the DOI in this recordWe thank the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts for providing ERA-Interim and Operational Analysis data (www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts) and the Freie Universität Berlin for providing radiosonde data (www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/met/ag/strat/produkte/qbo). The CMIP5 data was obtained from the British Atmospheric Data Centre (browse.ceda.ac.uk/browse/badc/cmip5). A summary of data used in the study is listed in table S1.One of the most repeatable phenomena seen in the atmosphere, the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) between prevailing eastward and westward wind jets in the equatorial stratosphere (approximately 16 to 50 kilometers altitude), was unexpectedly disrupted in February 2016. An unprecedented westward jet formed within the eastward phase in the lower stratosphere and cannot be accounted for by the standard QBO paradigm based on vertical momentum transport. Instead, the primary cause was waves transporting momentum from the Northern Hemisphere. Seasonal forecasts did not predict the disruption, but analogous QBO disruptions are seen very occasionally in some climate simulations. A return to more typical QBO behavior within the next year is forecast, although the possibility of more frequent occurrences of similar disruptions is projected for a warming climate.S.M.O. was supported by UK Natural Environment Research Council grants NE/M005828/1 and NE/P006779/1. A.A.S., J.R.K., and N.B. were supported by the Joint UK Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101). A.A.S. and J.R.K. were additionally supported by the EU Seventh Framework Programme SPECS (Seasonal-to-decadal climate Prediction for the improvement of European Climate Services) project

On the role of Rossby wave breaking in quasi‐biennial odulation of the stratospheric polar vortex

The boreal‐winter stratospheric polar vortex is more disturbed when the quasi‐biennial oscillation (QBO) in the lower stratosphere is in its easterly phase (eQBO), and more stable during the westerly phase (wQBO). This so‐called “Holton‐Tan effect” (HTE) is known to involve Rossby waves (RWs) but the details remain obscure. This tropical‐extratropical connection is re‐examined in an attempt to explain its intra‐seasonal variation and its relation to Rossby wave breaking (RWB). Reanalyses in isentropic coordinates from the National Center for Environmental Prediction Climate Forecast System for the 1979 – 2017 period are used to evaluate the relevant features of RWB in the context of waveguide, wave mean‐flow interaction, and the QBO‐induced meridional circulation. During eQBO, the net extratropical wave forcing is enhanced in early winter with ~25% increase in upward propagating PRWs of zonal wavenumber 1 (wave‐1). RWB is also enhanced in the lower stratosphere, characterized by convergent anomalies in the subtropics and at high‐latitudes and strengthened waveguide in between at 20‐40°N, 350‐650 K. In late winter, RWB leads to finite amplitude growth, which hinders upward propagating PRWs of zonal wavenumber 2 and 3 (wave‐2‐3). During wQBO, RWB in association with wave‐2‐3 is enhanced in the upper stratosphere. Wave absorption/mixing in the surf zone reinforces a stable polar vortex in early to middle winter. A poleward confinement of extratropical waveguide in the upper stratosphere forces RWB to extend downward around January. A strengthening of upward propagating wave‐2‐3 follows and the polar‐vortex response switches from reinforcement to disturbance around February, thus a sign reversal of the HTE in late winter

Possible impacts of a future grand solar minimum on climate: Stratospheric and global circulation changes.

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2014JD022022A future decline in solar activity would not offset projected global warmingA future decline in solar activity could have larger regional effects in winterTop-down mechanism contributes to Northern Hemisphere regional response.LJG and ACM were supported by the National Centre for Atmospheric Science's Climate Directorate. ACM also acknowledges support from the ERC ACCI project no. 267760 and an AXA Postdoctoral Fellowship. SI and AAS were supported by the Joint DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101). LJG and JAA were supported by a grant from the National Environmental Research Council

Interpreting the nature of Northern and Southern Annular Mode variability in CMIP5 Models

Characteristic timescales for the Northern Annular Mode (NAM) and Southern Annular Mode (SAM) variability are diagnosed in historical simulations submitted to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) and are compared to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts ERA-Interim data. These timescales are calculated from geopotential height anomaly spectra using a recently developed method, where spectra are divided into low-frequency (Lorentzian) and high-frequency (exponential) parts to account for stochastic and chaotic behaviors, respectively. As found for reanalysis data, model spectra at high frequencies are consistent with low-order chaotic behavior, in contrast to an AR1 process at low frequencies. This places the characterization of the annular mode timescales in a more dynamical rather than purely stochastic context. The characteristic high-frequency timescales for the NAM and SAM derived from the model spectra at high frequencies are ∼5 days, independent of season, which is consistent with the timescales of ERA-Interim. In the low-frequency domain, however, models are slightly biased toward too long timescales, but within the error bars, a finding which is consistent with previous studies of CMIP3 models. For the SAM, low-frequency timescales in November, December, January, and February are overestimated in the models compared to ERA-Interim. In some models, the overestimation in the SAM austral summer timescale is partly due to interannual variability, which can inflate these timescales by up to ∼40% in the models but only accounts for about 5% in the ERA-Interim reanalysis

Global observations of gravity wave intermittency and its impact on the observed momentum flux morphology

Three years of gravity wave observations from the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder instrument on NASA's Aura satellite are examined. We produce estimates of the global distribution of gravity wave momentum flux as a function of individual observed wave packets. The observed distribution at the 25 km altitude level is dominated by the small proportion of wave packets with momentum fluxes greater than ∼0.5 mPa. Depending on latitude and season, these wave packets only comprise ∼7-25% of observations, but are shown to be almost entirely responsible for the morphology of the observed global momentum flux distribution. Large-amplitude wave packets are found to be more important over orographic regions than over flat ocean regions, and to be especially high in regions poleward of 40°S during austral winter. The momentum flux carried by the largest packets relative to the distribution mean is observed to decrease with height over orographic wave generation regions, but to increase with height at tropical latitudes; the mesospheric intermittency resulting is broadly equivalent in both cases. Consistent with previous studies, waves in the top 10% of the extratropical distribution are observed to carry momentum fluxes more than twice the mean and waves in the top 1% more than 10× the mean, and the Gini coefficient is found to characterize the observed distributions well. These results have significant implications for gravity wave modeling. Key Points Observed GW distribution dominated by wave packets with MF>0.5 mPa Intermittency higher over orography Gini coefficient confirmed as a good metric for wave intermittency ©2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved

A wavelet transform method to determine monsoon onset and retreat from precipitation time‐series

A new method to determine monsoon onset and retreat timings using wavelet transform methodology applied to precipitation time‐series at the pentad scale is described. The principal advantage of this method is its portability, since it can be easily adapted for any region and dataset. The application of the method is illustrated for the North American Monsoon and the Indian Monsoon using four different precipitation datasets and climate model output. The method is shown to be robust across all the datasets and both monsoon regions. The mean onset and retreat dates agree well with previous methods. Spatial distributions of the precipitation and circulation anomalies identified around the onset and retreat dates are also consistent with previous work and illustrate that this method may be used at the grid‐box scale, not just over large area‐averaged regions. The method is also used to characterise the strength and timing of the Midsummer drought in southern Mexico and Central America. A two peak structure is found to be a robust structure in only in 33% of the years, with other years showing only one peak or no signs of a bimodal distribution. The two‐peak structure analysed at the grid‐box scale is shown to be a significant signal in several regions of Central America and southern Mexico. The methodology is also applied to climate model output from the Met Office Hadley Centre UKESM1 and HadGEM3 CMIP6 experiments. The modelled onset and retreat dates agree well with observations in the North American Monsoon but not in the Indian Monsoon. The start and end of the modelled Midsummer drought in southern Mexico and Central America is delayed by one pentad and has a stronger bimodal signal than observed

Descent rate models of the synchronization of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation by the annual cycle in tropical upwelling

The response of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) to an imposed mean upwelling with a periodic modulation is studied, by modelling the dynamics of the zero wind line at the equator using a class of equations known as ‘descent rate’ models. These are simple mathematical models that capture the essence of QBO synchronization by focusing on the dynamics of the height of the zero wind line. A heuristic descent rate model for the zero wind line is described, and is shown to capture many of the synchronization features seen in previous studies of the QBO. Using a simple transformation, it is then demonstrated that the standard Holton-Lindzen model of the QBO can itself be put into the form of a descent rate model if a quadratic velocity profile is assumed below the zero wind line. The resulting non-autonomous ordinary differential equation captures much of the synchronization behaviour observed in the full Holton-Lindzen partial differential equation. The new class of models provides a novel framework within which to understand synchronization of the QBO, and we demonstrate a close relationship between these models and the circle map well-known in the mathematics literature. Finally, we analyse reanalysis datasets to validate some of the predictions of our descent rate models, and find statistically significant evidence for synchronization of the QBO that is consistent with model behaviour

Origins of multi-decadal variability in sudden stratospheric warmings

Sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs) are major disruptions of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) stratospheric polar vortex and occur on average approximately six times per decade in observation-based records. However, within these records, intervals of significantly higher and lower SSW rates are observed, suggesting the possibility of low-frequency variations in event occurrence. A better understanding of factors that influence this decadal variability may help to improve predictability of NH midlatitude surface climate, through stratosphere–troposphere coupling. In this work, multi-decadal variability of SSW events is examined in a 1000-year pre-industrial simulation of a coupled global climate model. Using a wavelet spectral decomposition method, we show that hiatus events (intervals of a decade or more with no SSWs) and consecutive SSW events (extended intervals with at least one SSW in each year) vary on multi-decadal timescales of periods between 60 and 90 years. Signals on these timescales are present for approximately 450 years of the simulation. We investigate the possible source of these long-term signals and find that the direct impact of variability in tropical sea surface temperatures, as well as the associated Aleutian Low, can account for only a small portion of the SSW variability. Instead, the major influence on long-term SSW variability is associated with long-term variability in amplitude of the stratospheric quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). The QBO influence is consistent with the well-known Holton–Tan relationship, with SSW hiatus intervals associated with extended periods of particularly strong, deep QBO westerly phases. The results support recent studies that have highlighted the role of vertical coherence in the QBO when considering coupling between the QBO, the polar vortex and tropospheric circulation