PC53A:
U.S. CLIVAR Session on Oceanic Heat Uptake, Earth's Energy Imbalance, and the Global Warming "Hiatus" I


Session ID#: 9478

Session Description:
Through its enormous heat capacity, the ocean plays a leading role in storing transient energy imbalances in the climate system – both forced and as a result of natural variability.. The recent debate on the so-called global warming 'hiatus' highlights the need for improving our understanding of mechanisms that control radiative imbalances at the top of atmosphere and in the magnitude (and uncertainty) of implied oceanic heat uptake, together with its spatio-temporal distribution, on interannual to decadal time scales. Such understanding is also a prerequisite for developing skillful decadal prediction. This session solicits contributions dealing with critical assessment of the uncertainties in Earth radiative imbalance estimates; estimates of ocean atmosphere heat exchange; mechanisms of ocean heat content (OHC) variability inferred from observations and/or models; context of the recent 'hiatus' period within climate variability over the last century; gaps in the current global ocean observing systems and implied uncertainties in recent OHC change estimates; estimates of radiative forcing variability over the last decades; and observational and data assimilation requirements for improving OHC estimates.
Primary Chair:  Patrick Heimbach, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States
Chairs:  Xiao-Hai Yan, Univ Delaware, Newark, DE, United States, Felix W Landerer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States and Aaron Donohoe, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
Moderators:  Patrick Heimbach, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States, Xiao-Hai Yan, Univ Delaware, Newark, DE, United States, Aaron Donohoe, Applied Physics Laboratory University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States and Felix W Landerer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States
Student Paper Review Liaisons:  Aaron Donohoe, Applied Physics Laboratory University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States and Xiao-Hai Yan, Univ Delaware, Newark, DE, United States
Index Terms:

1616 Climate variability [GLOBAL CHANGE]
4262 Ocean observing systems [OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL]
4504 Air/sea interactions [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
4513 Decadal ocean variability [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
Co-Sponsor(s):
  • A - Air-sea Interactions and Upper Ocean Processes
  • PO - Physical Oceanography/Ocean Circulation

Abstracts Submitted to this Session:

PC53A-01
Earth’s energy imbalance and the global warming ‘hiatus’: insights from climate models and ocean reanalyses (88665)
Matthew D Palmer, Chris D Roberts and Doug J McNeall, Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, United Kingdom
PC53A-02
Robust non-local effects of ocean heat uptake on radiative feedback and subtropical cloud cover (92045)
Brian E J Rose, University at Albany State University of New York, Albany, NY, United States
PC53A-03
Understanding Patterns of Ocean Heat Content Change on Decadal Timescales Using a Global Ocean State Estimate (90267)
Rui M Ponte1, Christopher G Piecuch2, Patrick Heimbach3, Xinfeng Liang4 and Gaël Forget4, (1)Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Lexington, MA, United States, (2)Atmospheric and Environmental Research Lexington, Lexington, MA, United States, (3)University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States, (4)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
PC53A-04
Observed decadal ocean warming (2005-2014) and its contribution to the top-of-the-atmosphere energy budget (88740)
William Llovel and Laurent Terray, CERFACS European Centre for Research and Advanced Training in Scientific Computation, Toulouse Cedex 01, France
PC53A-05
Determining Causation of Hiatuses in a Large Ensemble (91397)
Christopher Hedemann1, Jochem Marotzke2, Thorsten Mauritsen2 and Johann H Jungclaus2, (1)Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, The Ocean in the Earth System, Hamburg, Germany, (2)Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany
PC53A-06
Informing Deep Argo Array Design Using Argo and Full-Depth Hydrographic Section Data (86893)
Gregory C Johnson, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, WA, United States, John M Lyman, JIMAR/PMEL, Seattle, WA, United States and Sarah Purkey, Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, New York, NY, United States
PC53A-07
Atlantic Induced Pan-tropical Climate Variability in the Upper-ocean and Atmosphere (92999)
Xichen Li1, Shang-Ping Xie1, Sarah T Gille2 and Changhyun Yoo3, (1)Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, United States, (2)UCSD, La Jolla, CA, United States, (3)Ewha Womans University, Climate and Energy Systems Engineering, Seoul, South Korea
PC53A-08
A Lagrangian Analysis of Heat Uptake in the Tropical and Subtropical Atlantic During the Global Warming Hiatus (90606)
Nandini Ramesh1,2, Richard Seager2, Mark A Cane1,2 and Ryan Abernathey1,2, (1)Columbia University of New York, Palisades, NY, United States, (2)Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY, United States
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