Tropospheric Adjustment: the Responses of Temperature and Precipitation to a Change in Solar Forcing

Details Tropospheric Adjustment: the Responses of Temperature and Precipitation to a Change in Solar Forcing Tropospheric Adjustment: the Responses of Temperature and Precipitation to a Change in Solar Forcing

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsh41a..06f&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SH41A-06

Physics

1626 Global Climate Models (3337, 4928), 1854 Precipitation (3354), 3354 Precipitation (1854)

Scientific paper

The responses of the HadCM3 and NCAR CCM3 general circulation models to a change in solar insolation are compared to their responses to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. In both models, it is found that the important difference is the rapid adjustment of the troposphere in the solar case that reduces the value of effective forcing by about 25%. Clear-sky warming appears to make the major contribution. Subsequent evolution of the coupled troposphere, land surface, ocean mixed-layer system proceeds with a very similar sensitivity and surface temperature response pattern to that under a CO2 forcing of the reduced value. Previous work has established that modeled precipitation responds more strongly to solar and volcanic forcing than to greenhouse gas forcing per unit temperature, because of the direct effect of greenhouse gases on the troposphere. (The precipitation response to surface temperature independent of direct effects is the same in both cases.) Recently, it has been argued that this is the reason that solar and volcanic forcing dominate the observed 20th century precipitation record, while greenhouse gas forcing dominates the observed 20th century temperature record. In our models, the smaller temperature response to solar forcing causes the overall precipitation response per unit forcing to be similar to or smaller than that to CO2. Hence, it is possible that the relative importance of different forcings to 20th century temperature and precipitation is due to lower sensitivity of temperature to solar and volcanic forcing, rather than lower sensitivity of precipitation to greenhouse gas forcing.

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