Contributions of Greenhouse Gas Forcing and the Southern Annular Mode to Historical Southern Ocean Surface Temperature Trends
Author(s)
Kostov, Yavor
Ferreira, David
Armour, Kyle C.
Marshall, John C
Date Issued
February 2018
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Kostov, Yavor et al. “Contributions of Greenhouse Gas Forcing and the Southern Annular Mode to Historical Southern Ocean Surface Temperature Trends.” Geophysical Research Letters 45, 2 (January 2018): 1086–1097 © 2018 American Geophysical Union
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
We examine the 1979–2014 Southern Ocean (SO) sea surface temperature (SST) trends simulated in an ensemble of coupled general circulation models and evaluate possible causes of the models' inability to reproduce the observed 1979–2014 SO cooling. For each model we estimate the response of SO SST to step changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing and in the seasonal indices of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Using these step-response functions, we skillfully reconstruct the models' 1979–2014 SO SST trends. Consistent with the seasonal signature of the Antarctic ozone hole and the seasonality of SO stratification, the summer and fall SAM exert a large impact on the simulated SO SST trends. We further identify conditions that favor multidecadal SO cooling: (1) a weak SO warming response to GHG forcing, (2) a strong multidecadal SO cooling response to a positive SAM trend, and (3) a historical SAM trend as strong as in observations.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL074964
