Revisiting the controversial issue of tropical tropospheric temperature trends

Controversy remains over a discrepancy between modeled and observed tropical upper tropospheric temperature trends. This discrepancy is reassessed using simulations from the Coupled Climate Model Inter-comparison Project phase 5 (CMIP 5) together with radiosonde and surface observations that provide...

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Main Authors: Mitchell, D, Thorne, P, Stott, P, Gray, L
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: 2013
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author Mitchell, D
Thorne, P
Stott, P
Gray, L
author_facet Mitchell, D
Thorne, P
Stott, P
Gray, L
author_sort Mitchell, D
collection OXFORD
description Controversy remains over a discrepancy between modeled and observed tropical upper tropospheric temperature trends. This discrepancy is reassessed using simulations from the Coupled Climate Model Inter-comparison Project phase 5 (CMIP 5) together with radiosonde and surface observations that provide multiple realizations of possible "observed" temperatures given various methods of homogenizing the data. Over the 1979-2008 period, tropical temperature trends are not consistent with observations throughout the depth of the troposphere, and this primarily stems from a poor simulation of the surface temperature trends. This discrepancy is substantially reduced when (1) atmosphere-only simulations are examined or (2) the trends are considered as an amplification of the surface temperature trend with height. Using these approaches, it is shown that within observational uncertainty, the 5-95 percentile range of temperature trends from both coupled-ocean and atmosphere-only models are consistent with the analyzed observations at all but the upper most tropospheric level (150 hPa), and models with ultra-high horizontal resolution (≤ 0.5° × 0.5°) perform particularly well. Other than model resolution, it is hypothesized that this remaining discrepancy could be due to a poor representation of stratospheric ozone or remaining observational uncertainty. © 2013 American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
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spelling oxford-uuid:2fba0ae6-d7bf-49ed-834e-ed67542018082022-03-26T12:57:07ZRevisiting the controversial issue of tropical tropospheric temperature trendsJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:2fba0ae6-d7bf-49ed-834e-ed6754201808EnglishSymplectic Elements at Oxford2013Mitchell, DThorne, PStott, PGray, LControversy remains over a discrepancy between modeled and observed tropical upper tropospheric temperature trends. This discrepancy is reassessed using simulations from the Coupled Climate Model Inter-comparison Project phase 5 (CMIP 5) together with radiosonde and surface observations that provide multiple realizations of possible "observed" temperatures given various methods of homogenizing the data. Over the 1979-2008 period, tropical temperature trends are not consistent with observations throughout the depth of the troposphere, and this primarily stems from a poor simulation of the surface temperature trends. This discrepancy is substantially reduced when (1) atmosphere-only simulations are examined or (2) the trends are considered as an amplification of the surface temperature trend with height. Using these approaches, it is shown that within observational uncertainty, the 5-95 percentile range of temperature trends from both coupled-ocean and atmosphere-only models are consistent with the analyzed observations at all but the upper most tropospheric level (150 hPa), and models with ultra-high horizontal resolution (≤ 0.5° × 0.5°) perform particularly well. Other than model resolution, it is hypothesized that this remaining discrepancy could be due to a poor representation of stratospheric ozone or remaining observational uncertainty. © 2013 American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
spellingShingle Mitchell, D
Thorne, P
Stott, P
Gray, L
Revisiting the controversial issue of tropical tropospheric temperature trends
title Revisiting the controversial issue of tropical tropospheric temperature trends
title_full Revisiting the controversial issue of tropical tropospheric temperature trends
title_fullStr Revisiting the controversial issue of tropical tropospheric temperature trends
title_full_unstemmed Revisiting the controversial issue of tropical tropospheric temperature trends
title_short Revisiting the controversial issue of tropical tropospheric temperature trends
title_sort revisiting the controversial issue of tropical tropospheric temperature trends
work_keys_str_mv AT mitchelld revisitingthecontroversialissueoftropicaltropospherictemperaturetrends
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