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Coupling between subtropical cloud feedback and the local hydrological cycle in a climate model

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Abstract

In HadGEM2-A, AMIP experiments forced with observed sea surface temperatures respond to uniform and patterned +4 K SST perturbations with strong positive cloud feedbacks in the subtropical stratocumulus/trade cumulus transition regions. Over the subtropical Northeast Pacific at 137°W/26°N, the boundary layer cloud fraction reduces considerably in the AMIP +4 K patterned SST experiment. The near-surface wind speed and the air-sea temperature difference reduces, while the near-surface relative humidity increases. These changes limit the local increase in surface evaporation to just 3 W/m2 or 0.6 %/K. Previous studies have suggested that increases in surface evaporation may be required to maintain maritime boundary layer cloud in a warmer climate. This suggests that the supply of water vapour from surface evaporation may not be increasing enough to maintain the low level cloud fraction in the warmer climate in HadGEM2-A. Sensitivity tests which force the surface evaporation to increase substantially in the +4 K patterned SST experiment result in smaller changes in boundary layer cloud and a weaker cloud feedback in HadGEM2-A, supporting this idea. Although global mean surface evaporation in climate models increases robustly with global temperature (and the resulting increase in atmospheric radiative cooling), local values may increase much less, having a significant impact on cloud feedback. These results suggest a coupling between cloud feedback and the hydrological cycle via changes in the patterns of surface evaporation. A better understanding of both the factors controlling local changes in surface evaporation and the sensitivity of clouds to such changes may be required to understand the reasons for inter-model differences in subtropical cloud feedback.

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Notes

  1. see CLIVAR Exchanges, May 2011 http://www.clivar.org/publications/exchanges.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Brian Soden for creating the CMIP5/CFMIP-2 patterned SST forcing dataset, and Yoko Tsushima and Tim Hinton for setting up and testing the tendency diagnostics in HadGEM2. We are also grateful to William Ingram, Roy Kershaw, Hugo Lambert, Bjorn Stevens, Peter Blossey and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on the manuscript, and to Sandrine Bony and Florent Brient for useful discussions. This work was supported by the Joint DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union, Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement number 244067 via the EU CLoud Intercomparison and Process Study Evaluation project (EUCLIPSE).

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    Mark. J. Webb & Adrian P. Lock

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Correspondence to Mark. J. Webb.

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Webb, M.J., Lock, A.P. Coupling between subtropical cloud feedback and the local hydrological cycle in a climate model. Clim Dyn 41, 1923–1939 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1608-5

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