The impact of greenhouse climate change on the energetics and hydrologic processes of mid-latitude transient eddies

Atmospheric transient eddies contribute significantly to mid-latitude energy and water vapor transports. Changes in the global climate, as induced by greenhouse enhancement, will likely alter transient eddy behavior. Unraveling all the feedbacks that occur in general circulation models (GCMs) can be difficult. The transient eddies are isolated from the feedbacks and are focused on the response of the eddies to zonal-mean climate changes that result from CO2-doubling. Using a primitive-equation spectral model, the impact of climate change on the life cycles of transient eddies is examined. Transient eddy behavior in experiments is compared with initial conditions that are given by the zonal-mean climates of the GCMs with current and doubled amounts of CO2. The smaller meridional temperature gradient in a doubled CO2 climate leads to a reduction in eddy kinetic energy, especially in the subtropics. The decrease in subtropical eddy energy is related to a substantial reduction in equatorward flux of eddy activity during the latter part of the life cycle. The reduction in equatorward energy flux alters the moisture cycle. Eddy meridional transport of water vapor is shifted slightly poleward and subtropical precipitation is reduced. The water vapor transport exhibits a relatively small change in magnitude, compared to changes in eddy energy, due to the compensating effect of higher specific humidity in the doubled-CO2 climate. An increase in high-latitude precipitation is related to the poleward shift in eddy water vapor flux. Surface evaporation amplifies climatic changes in water vapor transport and precipitation in the experiments

Moist Baroclinic Instability in the Presence of Surface–Atmosphere Coupling

The influence of convective heating on baroclinic instability in the presence of surface sensible heat and moisture fluxes is investigated. Following previous numerical work, a two-dimensional continuous model on an f plane incorporates diabatic heating effects due to cumulus convection and surface sensible heat flux using parameterizations based on a wave-induced unstable boundary layer and associated moist convective destabilization. The temperature-damping effect of surface sensible heat flux is assumed to decrease exponentially with height, and the vertical distribution of convective heating uses a prescribed profile. The atmosphere is assumed to overlie an oceanic surface. In this configuration, convective heating occurs in the wave’s cold sector. General forms of the dispersion relation and eigenfunction are derived analytically. Results show that the most unstable wave is modified by the effect of convective latent heating. With weak convection, the wave’s structure does not change much, while the wave’s energy generation is hampered by the negative contribution of convection. In the presence of moderate convective heating, although the wave’s energy generation is decreased by convection, the wave adjusts its structure to minimize the negative effect of convection and retain growth. In the region with strong convective heating, convective heating significantly changes the wave’s temperature structure. Above and below the strong heating region, the wave structure still retains some features of the Eady mode. The results have bearing on how the structure of oceanic storms may be altered by convection

Some Conceptual and Scaling Evaluations of Snowmelt Events Forced by Warm Soil

Snowfall occasionally occurs over bare soil with high thermal storage in its upper layer. Quantification and generalization of the potential impact of the thermal storage on episodic snowmelt is evaluated using a scaling approach and assuming negligible net thermal flux at the snow cover top. Soil thermal flux contribution to snowmelt is found to be affected significantly by the level of soil wetness. It is shown that, for a soil temperature of 10°C prior to the snowfall, the contribution of wet soil thermal flux is significant within the first 12 h when compared with intense surface moist enthalpy flux or solar radiation. Implications of these results to modeling of snowmelt using coupled soil–atmosphere models are elaborated