Spatial Patterns of Radiative Forcing and Surface Temperature Response

Abstract:

Examination of radiative forcing (RF), a key measure of changes in the energy balance of the Earth, facilitates understanding of the role of various drivers of climate change. For short-lived compounds, the RF can be highly inhomogeneous geographically. The relationship between the spatial patterns of RF and climate response is poorly characterized, however. Here we examine the relationship between RF and surface temperature response in the latest generation of climate models. We find that the geographic distribution of historical changes in aerosol and ozone RF strongly influences the response, leading to substantial regional differences with respect to the response to quasi-uniform well-mixed greenhouse gases (WMGHG). In particular, the response in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) extratropics and tropics follows the forcing in those regions fairly closely. There is a stronger global sensitivity to historical aerosol plus ozone RF than to WMGHG RF with equivalent global mean value, as noted previously [D T Shindell, 2014] and a stronger response in much of the NH extratropics, especially in and downwind of industrialized areas. The enhanced response is shown to be particularly large over land plus polar ocean areas, where transient response occurs more rapidly and strong snow and ice albedo feedbacks operate. This response is not attributable to greater forcing over those regions, but rather appears to reflect a broad sensitivity of NH extratropical land areas to NH extratropical forcing. The models show substantial diversity in the enhancement of land+polar ocean response to aerosols plus ozone relative to WMGHG, and for ocean response some models show reduced sensitivity to aerosols plus ozone (though the multi-model mean shows an enhancement), suggesting that different representations of land and ocean adjustment timescales and regional heat transport contribute greatly to the differences in response to inhomogeneous forcing. In addition, areas with greatest variation across the CMIP5 models’ simulations of historical surface temperature change are shown to correspond in most cases with areas where aerosol+ozone forcing has enhanced impact, suggesting that better characterization of those forcings could play an important role in improving modeling of regional climate change.