Changes in gross moist stability in the tropics under global warming

Chou, Chia; Wu, Tzu-Chin; Tan, Pei‐Hua

doi:10.1007/s00382-013-1703-2

Cited by 62 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…In addition, some schemes relate L NO x to aerosols (Yuan et al, 2012;Venevsky, 2014), with potentially complex links between climate and L NO x . With global warming, tropical stability increases (Held and Soden, 2006;Chou et al, 2013) tending to reduce convection. However, the tropopause tends to rise, allowing convection to reach greater heights.…”

Section: Lightningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Ozone holds a certain fascination in atmospheric science. It is ubiquitous in the atmosphere, central to tropospheric oxidation chemistry, yet harmful to human and ecosystem health as well as being an important greenhouse gas. It is not emitted into the atmosphere but is a byproduct of the very oxidation chemistry it largely initiates. Much effort is focused on the reduction of surface levels of ozone owing to its health and vegetation impacts, but recent efforts to achieve reductions in exposure at a country scale have proved difficult to achieve owing to increases in background ozone at the zonal hemispheric scale. There is also a growing realisation that the role of ozone as a short-lived climate pollutant could be important in integrated air quality climate change mitigation. This review examines current understanding of the processes regulating tropospheric ozone at global to local scales from both measurements and models. It takes the view that knowledge across the scales is important for dealing with air quality and climate change in a synergistic manner. The review shows that there remain a number of clear challenges for ozone such as explaining surface trends, incorporating new chemical understanding, ozone-climate coupling, and a better assessment of impacts. There is a clear and present need to treat ozone across the range of scales, a transboundary issue, but with an emphasis on the hemispheric scales. New observational opportunities are offered both by satellites and small sensors that bridge the scales.

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Section: Lightningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

et al. 2015

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“…In contrast, a nearly uniform radiative forcing induces a rather subtle HC shift and changes in Δm cannot be ignored. [37][38][39][40] In this situation, the energy flux equator is no longer a good proxy for the ITCZ. 16 Therefore, one must account for changes in the TGMS for a complete theory.…”

Section: Limitations and Ways Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extratropical forcing and tropical rainfall distribution: energetics framework and ocean Ekman advection

2018

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Intense tropical rainfall occurs in a narrow belt near the equator, called the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ). In the past decade, the atmospheric energy budget has been used to explain changes in the zonal-mean ITCZ position. The energetics framework provides a mechanism for extratropics-to-tropics teleconnections, which have been postulated from paleoclimate records. In atmosphere models coupled with a motionless slab ocean, the ITCZ shifts toward the warmed hemisphere in order for the Hadley circulation to transport energy toward the colder hemisphere. However, recent studies using fully coupled models show that tropical rainfall can be rather insensitive to extratropical forcing when ocean dynamics is included. Here, we explore the effect of meridional Ekman heat advection while neglecting the upwelling effect on the ITCZ response to prescribed extratropical thermal forcing. The tropical component of Ekman advection is a negative feedback that partially compensates the prescribed forcing, whereas the extratropical component is a positive feedback that amplifies the prescribed forcing. Overall, the tropical negative feedback dominates over the extratropical positive feedback. Thus, including Ekman advection reduces the need for atmospheric energy transport, dampening the ITCZ response. We propose to build a hierarchy of ocean models to systematically explore the full dynamical response of the coupled climate system.

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“…To understand how the convection change affects the vertical moisture transport, we further decompose the pressure velocity into a product of its vertical profile and its strength (Yu and Neelin 1997;Chou and Neelin 2004;Chou et al 2013;Chen et al 2016): where (p) describes the vertical structure of vertical velocity (convection), and ∇ · T is the divergence induced by the first baroclinic winds, representing the intensity of vertical velocity (convection) and a positive ∇ · T denotes upward motion. In this study, is estimated from by a normalization using the vertical integral of its corresponding intensity at each level, i.e., (p) = � ∑P T P S 2 , similar to Chen et al (2016).…”

Section: The Moisture Budget Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of model spatial resolution on the vertical structure of convection in the tropics

Bui

Chou

2018

Clim Dyn

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This study examined the impacts of model horizontal resolution on vertical structures of convection in the tropics by performing sensitivity experiments with the NCAR CESM1. It was found that contributions to the total precipitation between top-heavy and bottom-heavy convection are different among various resolutions. A coarser resolution tends to produce a greater contribution from top-heavy convection and, as a result, stronger precipitation in the western Pacific ITCZ; while there is less contribution from bottom-heavy convection and weaker precipitation in the eastern Pacific ITCZ. In the western Pacific ITCZ, where the convection is dominated by a top-heavy structure, the stronger precipitation in coarser resolution experiments is due to changes in temperature and moisture profiles associated with a warmer environment (i.e., thermodynamical effect). In the eastern Pacific ITCZ, where the convection is dictated by a bottom-heavy structure, the stronger precipitation in finer resolution experiments comes from changes in convection structure (i.e., dynamic effect) which favors a greater contribution of bottom-heavy convection as the model resolution goes higher. The moisture budget analysis further suggested that the very different behavior in precipitation tendencies in response to model resolution changes between the western and eastern Pacific ITCZs are determined mainly by changes in convective structure rather than changes in convective strength. This study pointed out the importance of model spatial resolution in reproducing a reasonable contribution to the total precipitation between top-heavy and bottom-heavy structure of convection in the tropical Pacific ITCZs.

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Changes in gross moist stability in the tropics under global warming

Cited by 62 publications

References 39 publications

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

Extratropical forcing and tropical rainfall distribution: energetics framework and ocean Ekman advection

Impacts of model spatial resolution on the vertical structure of convection in the tropics

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