Authors: Baoqiang Xiang Bin Wang Axel Lauer JuneYi Lee Qinghua Ding
Publish Date: 2013/08/30
Volume: 43, Issue: 1-2, Pages: 259-270
Abstract
One of the robust features in the future projections made by the stateoftheart climate models is that the highest warming rate occurs in the uppertroposphere especially in the tropics It has been suggested that more warming in the uppertroposphere than the lowertroposphere should exert a dampening effect on the sea surface warming associated with the negative lapse rate feedback This study however demonstrates that the tropical uppertropospheric warming UTW tends to trap more moisture in the lower troposphere and weaken the surface wind speed both contributing to reduce the upward surface latent heat flux so as to trigger the initial sea surface warming We refer to this as a ‘topdown’ warming mechanism The rise of tropospheric moisture together with the positive water vapor feedback enhance the downward longwave radiation to the surface and facilitate strengthening the initial sea surface warming Meanwhile the rise of sea surface temperature SST can feed back to intensify the initial UTW through the moist adiabatic adjustment completing a positive UTW–SST warming feedback The proposed ‘topdown’ warming mechanism and the associated positive UTW–SST warming feedback together affect the surface global warming rate and also have important implications for understanding the past and future changes of precipitation clouds and atmospheric circulationsThe authors thank ShangPing Xie Qiang Fu Tim Li and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments This study is supported by the International Pacific Research Center which is funded jointly by JAMSTEC NOAA and NASA BX BW and JYL acknowledge APEC Climate Center APCC and Global Research Laboratory GRL grant funded by the Ministry of Education Science and Technology MEST 20110021927 JYL is supported by the MEST Brain Pool program We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modeling which is responsible for CMIP and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output
Keywords: