Physics
Scientific paper
Aug 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008georl..3516706l&link_type=abstract
Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 35, Issue 16, CiteID L16706
Physics
26
Hydrology: Precipitation (3354), Global Change: Global Climate Models (3337, 4928), Atmospheric Processes: Climate Change And Variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513), Atmospheric Processes: Clouds And Cloud Feedbacks
Scientific paper
We investigate the causes of temperature dependent changes in global precipitation in contemporary General Circulation Models (GCMs) subjected to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. By analyzing the energy budget of the troposphere, we find that changes are dominated by processes robustly simulated by GCMs. Importantly, shortwave cloud feedbacks, whose uncertainty is largely responsible for the wide range of GCM temperature climate sensitivities, are shown to have little effect. This is because these mainly arise from the scattering of shortwave radiation that has little impact on the tropospheric heating that controls precipitation. Hence, we expect that the range of simulated precipitation sensitivities to temperature will not change greatly in future GCMs, despite the recent suggestion that satellite observations indicate that GCM precipitation changes are significantly in error.
Lambert Hugo F.
Webb Mark J.
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