The tropical Atlantic interhemispheric gradient in sea surface temperature significantly influences the rainfall climate of the tropical Atlantic sector, including droughts over West Africa and Northeast Brazil. This gradient exhibits a secular trend from the beginning of the twentieth century until the 1980s, with stronger warming in the south relative to the north. This trend behavior is on top of a multidecadal variation associated with the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. A similar long-term forced trend is found in a multimodel ensemble of forced twentieth-century climate simulations. Through examining the distribution of the trend slopes in the multimodel twentieth-century and preindustrial models, the authors conclude that the observed trend in the gradient is unlikely to arise purely from natural variations; this study suggests that at least half the observed trend is a forced response to twentieth-century climate forcings. Further analysis using twentiethcentury single-forcing runs indicates that sulfate aerosol forcing is the predominant cause of the multimodel trend. The authors conclude that anthropogenic sulfate aerosol emissions, originating predominantly from the Northern Hemisphere, may have significantly altered the tropical Atlantic rainfall climate over the twentieth century.
The Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3) has a dipolelike pattern with a cold bias in the northern Tropics and a warm bias in the southeastern Tropics, which is reminiscent of the observed pattern of climate variability in boreal spring. Along the equator, in contrast, in boreal spring CCSM3 exhibits striking westerly winds with easterly winds in the upper troposphere, in turn reminiscent of the observed pattern of climate variability in boreal summer. The westerly winds cause a deepening of the eastern thermocline that keeps the east warm despite enhanced coastal upwelling. Thus, the bias in the seasonal cycle of the coupled model appears to project at least partially onto the spatial patterns of natural climate variability in this sector.Information about the origin of the bias in CCSM3 is deduced from a comparison of CCSM3 with a simulation using specified historical SST to force the Community Atmospheric Model version 3 (CAM3). The patterns of bias in CAM3 resemble those apparent in CCSM3, including the appearance of substantially intensified subtropical bands of sea level pressure (SLP), indicating that the problem may be traced to difficulties in the atmospheric component model. Positive SLP bias also appears in the western tropical region, which may be related to deficient Amazonian precipitation. The positive SLP bias seems to be the cause of the anomalous westerly trade winds in boreal spring, and those in turn appear to be responsible for the anomalous deepening of the thermocline in the southeastern Tropics.
TitleLong-term behavior of the atlantic interhemispheric sst gradient in the cmip5 historical simulations Observations show a secular trend to this gradient over most of the twentieth century, with the southern lobe warming faster relative to its northern counterpart. A previous study of phase 3 of the CMIP (CMIP3) suggests that this trend is partially forced by anthropogenic sulfate aerosols. This analysis collectively confirms the partially forced trend for the CMIP5 and by anthropogenic aerosols. Like the CMIP3, the CMIP5 also simulates a reversal in the AITG trend in the late 1970s, which was attributed to a leveling off of the anthropogenic aerosol influence and increased influence of greenhouse gases in the late twentieth century. Two (of 25) CMIP5 models, however, systematically simulate a twentieth-century trend opposite to observed, leading to some uncertainty regarding the forced nature of the AITG trend. The observed AITG also exhibits a pronounced multidecadal modulation on top of the trend, associated with the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO). Motivated by a recent suggestion that the AMO is a forced response to aerosols, the causes of this multidecadal behavior were also examined. A few of the CMIP5 models analyzed do produce multidecadal AITG variations that are correlated to the observed AMO-like variation, but only one, the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model, version 2 (HadGEM2), systematically simulates AMO-like behavior with both the requisite amplitude and phase. The CMIP5 simulations thus point to a robust aerosol influence on the historical AITG trend but not to the AMO-like multidecadal behavior.
.The study makes the case that westerly bias in the surface winds of the NCAR atmospheric and coupled models (CAM3 and CCSM3, respectively) over the equatorial Atlantic in boreal spring has its origin in the rainfall (diabatic heating) bias over the tropical South American continent. The case is made by examination of the spatio-temporal evolution of regional precipitation and wind biases, and by dynamical diagnoses of the westerly wind bias from experiments with a steady, linearized dynamical core of an atmospheric general circulation model. Diagnostic modeling indicates that underestimation of rainfall over the eastern Amazon region can lead to the westerly bias in equatorial Atlantic surface winds.The study suggests that efforts to reduce coupled model biases, especially seasonal ones, must target continental biases, even in the deep Tropics where ocean-atmosphere interaction generally rules.
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