Vertical structure of warming consistent with an upward shift in the middle and upper troposphere
Warming in climate-change simulations reaches a local maximum in the tropical upper troposphere as expected from moist-adiabatic lapse rates. But the structure of warming varies between models and differs substantially from moist adiabatic in the extratropics. Here, we relate the vertical profile of...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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American Geophysical Union (AGU)
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/85599 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1748-0816 |
| _version_ | 1826201524722728960 |
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| author | Singh, Martin Simran O'Gorman, Paul |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Singh, Martin Simran O'Gorman, Paul |
| author_sort | Singh, Martin Simran |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Warming in climate-change simulations reaches a local maximum in the tropical upper troposphere as expected from moist-adiabatic lapse rates. But the structure of warming varies between models and differs substantially from moist adiabatic in the extratropics. Here, we relate the vertical profile of warming to the climatological temperature profile using the vertical-shift transformation (VST). The VST captures much of the intermodel scatter in the ratio of upper- to middle-tropospheric warming in both the extratropics and tropics of simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5). Application of the VST to observed climatological temperatures yields warming ratios that are in the range of what is obtained from the model climatological temperatures, although biases in some model climatologies lead to substantial errors when shifted upward. Radiosonde temperature trends are consistent with an upward shift in recent decades in the Northern Hemisphere, with less-robust results in the Southern Hemisphere. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:52:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/85599 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:52:48Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | American Geophysical Union (AGU) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/855992024-05-15T05:41:40Z Vertical structure of warming consistent with an upward shift in the middle and upper troposphere Singh, Martin Simran O'Gorman, Paul Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences O'Gorman, Paul Ambrose Singh, Martin Simran Warming in climate-change simulations reaches a local maximum in the tropical upper troposphere as expected from moist-adiabatic lapse rates. But the structure of warming varies between models and differs substantially from moist adiabatic in the extratropics. Here, we relate the vertical profile of warming to the climatological temperature profile using the vertical-shift transformation (VST). The VST captures much of the intermodel scatter in the ratio of upper- to middle-tropospheric warming in both the extratropics and tropics of simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5). Application of the VST to observed climatological temperatures yields warming ratios that are in the range of what is obtained from the model climatological temperatures, although biases in some model climatologies lead to substantial errors when shifted upward. Radiosonde temperature trends are consistent with an upward shift in recent decades in the Northern Hemisphere, with less-robust results in the Southern Hemisphere. National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant AGS-1148594) 2014-03-10T20:18:29Z 2014-03-10T20:18:29Z 2013-05 2013-02 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 00948276 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/85599 O’Gorman, Paul A., and Martin S. Singh. “Vertical Structure of Warming Consistent with an Upward Shift in the Middle and Upper Troposphere.” Geophys. Res. Lett. 40, no. 9 (May 16, 2013): 1838–1842. Copyright © 2013 American Geophysical Union https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1748-0816 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/grl.50328 Geophysical Research Letters Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf American Geophysical Union (AGU) American Geophysical Union |
| spellingShingle | Singh, Martin Simran O'Gorman, Paul Vertical structure of warming consistent with an upward shift in the middle and upper troposphere |
| title | Vertical structure of warming consistent with an upward shift in the middle and upper troposphere |
| title_full | Vertical structure of warming consistent with an upward shift in the middle and upper troposphere |
| title_fullStr | Vertical structure of warming consistent with an upward shift in the middle and upper troposphere |
| title_full_unstemmed | Vertical structure of warming consistent with an upward shift in the middle and upper troposphere |
| title_short | Vertical structure of warming consistent with an upward shift in the middle and upper troposphere |
| title_sort | vertical structure of warming consistent with an upward shift in the middle and upper troposphere |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/85599 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1748-0816 |
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