Reconciling theories of a mechanically driven meridional overturning circulation with thermohaline forcing and multiple equilibria

It has recently been suggested that the structure and strength of the meridional overturning circulation in the global ocean is governed by the input of mechanical energy to the system by winds and tides. However, it is not clear how this suggestion relates to the existence of multiple equilibria of the meridional overturning circulation, which depends on thermohaline feedbacks and is more consistent with a buoyancy-driven view of the circulation. Both theories have been illustrated by box models in the past (Stommel in Tellus 13:224–230, 1961; Gnanadesikan in Science 283:2077–2079, 1999). Here we incorporate these two theories into a single box model in an attempt to reconcile the roles of mechanical and buoyancy forcing in driving the meridional overturning circulation. The box model has two equilibrium solutions, one with sinking at high northern latitudes as in the present-day Atlantic, and one without. The circulation is mechanically driven, but the northern sinking can be thought of as a release valve which acts as a sink of potential energy when the surface water at high northern latitudes is dense enough to convect. While the source of energy comes from mechanical forcing, the presence or otherwise of multiple equilibria is therefore determined by thermohaline feedbacks. In some areas of parameter space an oscillation between the model’s two circulation regimes occurs, reminiscent of a bipolar seesaw.     

Meridional overturning circulation: stability and ocean feedbacks in a box model

A box model of the inter-hemispheric Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is developed, including a variable pycnocline depth for the tropical and subtropical regions. The circulation is forced by winds over a periodic channel in the south and by freshwater forcing at the surface. The model is aimed at investigating the ocean feedbacks related to perturbations in freshwater forcing from the atmosphere, and to changes in freshwater transport in the ocean. These feedbacks are closely connected with the stability properties of the meridional overturning circulation, in particular in response to freshwater perturbations. A separate box is used for representing the region north of the Antarctic circumpolar current in the Atlantic sector. The density difference between this region and the north of the basin is then used for scaling the downwelling in the north. These choices are essential for reproducing the sensitivity of the meridional overturning circulation observed in general circulation models, and therefore suggest that the southernmost part of the Atlantic Ocean north of the Drake Passage is of fundamental importance for the stability of the meridional overturning circulation. With this configuration, the magnitude of the freshwater transport by the southern subtropical gyre strongly affects the response of the meridional overturning circulation to external forcing. The role of the freshwater transport by the overturning circulation (M _ov ) as a stability indicator is discussed. It is investigated under which conditions its sign at the latitude of the southern tip of Africa can provide information on the existence of a second, permanently shut down, state of the overturning circulation in the box model. M _ov will be an adequate indicator of the existence of multiple equilibria only if salt-advection feedback dominates over other processes in determining the response of the circulation to freshwater anomalies. M _ov is a perfect indicator if feedbacks other than salt-advection are negligible.     

Accuracy and sensitivity analysis for 54 models of computing hourly diffuse solar irradiation on clear sky

Fifty-four broadband models for computation of solar diffuse irradiation on horizontal surface were tested in Romania (South-Eastern Europe). The input data consist of surface meteorological data, column integrated data, and data derived from satellite measurements. The testing procedure is performed in 21 stages intended to provide information about the sensitivity of the models to various sets of input data. There is no model to be ranked “the best” for all sets of input data. However, some of the models performed better than others, in the sense that they were ranked among the best for most of the testing stages. The best models for solar diffuse radiation computation are, on equal footing, ASHRAE 2005 model (ASHRAE 2005) and King model (King and Buckius, Solar Energy 22:297–301, 1979). The second best model is MAC model (Davies, Bound Layer Meteor 9:33–52, 1975). Details about the performance of each model in the 21 testing stages are found in the Electronic Supplementary Material.     

Environmental policy under model uncertainty: a robust optimal control approach

The design of optimal environmental policy inherits model uncertainty. We investigate the consequences in a simple linear model, where the aim of the policymaker is to stabilise the atmospheric content of carbon. We study how decision-makers’ concerns about robustness alters policy using the Hansen and Sargent (2003, 2008) approach. The analysis shows that a policymaker, who fears about model misspecification should react more aggressively to changes in the stock of atmospheric carbon and reduce emissions stronger.     

Dynamics and predictability of a low-order wind-driven ocean–atmosphere coupled model

The dynamics of a low-order coupled wind-driven ocean–atmosphere system is investigated with emphasis on its predictability properties. The low-order coupled deterministic system is composed of a baroclinic atmosphere for which 12 dominant dynamical modes are only retained (Charney and Straus in J Atmos Sci 37:1157–1176, 1980) and a wind-driven, quasi-geostrophic and reduced-gravity shallow ocean whose field is truncated to four dominant modes able to reproduce the large scale oceanic gyres (Pierini in J Phys Oceanogr 41:1585–1604, 2011). The two models are coupled through mechanical forcings only. The analysis of its dynamics reveals first that under aperiodic atmospheric forcings only dominant single gyres (clockwise or counterclockwise) appear, while for periodic atmospheric solutions the double gyres emerge. In the present model domain setting context, this feature is related to the level of truncation of the atmospheric fields, as indicated by a preliminary analysis of the impact of higher wavenumber (“synoptic” scale) modes on the development of oceanic gyres. In the latter case, double gyres appear in the presence of a chaotic atmosphere. Second the dynamical quantities characterizing the short-term predictability (Lyapunov exponents, Lyapunov dimension, Kolmogorov–Sinaï (KS) entropy) displays a complex dependence as a function of the key parameters of the system, namely the coupling strength and the external thermal forcing. In particular, the KS-entropy is increasing as a function of the coupling in most of the experiments, implying an increase of the rate of loss of information about the localization of the system on its attractor. Finally the dynamics of the error is explored and indicates, in particular, a rich variety of short term behaviors of the error in the atmosphere depending on the (relative) amplitude of the initial error affecting the ocean, from polynomial (at ² + bt ³ + ct ⁴) up to exponential-like evolutions. These features are explained and analyzed in the light of the recent findings on error growth (Nicolis et al. in J Atmos Sci 66:766–778, 2009).     

Ability of CCSM4 to simulate California extreme heat conditions from evaluating simulations of the associated large scale upper air pattern

This study assesses how well the Community Climate System Model version 4 (CCSM4) simulates the large scale conditions needed for extreme hot surface temperatures in the California Central Valley (CV). Extreme hot summer days in the CV are associated with a large scale meteorological pattern (LSMP) described in Grotjahn and Faure (2008). The strength and sign of that pattern are assessed using a circulation index developed in Grotjahn (2011). The circulation index is strongly linked to daily maximum surface temperature normalized anomalies at stations spanning the CV. (Extreme heat events in the CV also affect a wider area of California and United States west coast). This study makes two primary points. First, the approach used in Grotjahn (2011) can be applied as a novel tool to evaluate how skillfully a model simulates conditions present during CV hot spells by evaluating how well the LSMP is simulated. The circulation index is calculated from historical simulations by CCSM4 and its distribution compared with that of the observed circulation index. Second, values of the CCSM4 based circulation index have smaller standard deviation than observed in reanalysis data. CCSM4 can generate a few comparably large circulation index values (implying high surface temperature anomalies) but not as often as in reanalysis data. Correct simulation of this large scale pattern is a necessary condition for successful simulation of California extreme hot days by a regional climate model. Also, the CCSM4 topography does not have a CV, but a broad topographic slope instead. Various choices of CCSM4 grid points were tested and none satisfactorily represented the CV maximum temperatures. These results should discourage use of CCSM4 surface data directly but encourage use of a regional climate model driven by the CCSM4 to capture hot spells in the CV.     

On the time-varying trend in global-mean surface temperature

The Earth has warmed at an unprecedented pace in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s (IPCC in Climate change 2007: the scientific basis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007). In Wu et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:14889–14894, 2007) we showed that the rapidity of the warming in the late twentieth century was a result of concurrence of a secular warming trend and the warming phase of a multidecadal (~65-year period) oscillatory variation and we estimated the contribution of the former to be about 0.08°C per decade since ~1980. Here we demonstrate the robustness of those results and discuss their physical links, considering in particular the shape of the secular trend and the spatial patterns associated with the secular trend and the multidecadal variability. The shape of the secular trend and rather globally-uniform spatial pattern associated with it are both suggestive of a response to the buildup of well-mixed greenhouse gases. In contrast, the multidecadal variability tends to be concentrated over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere and particularly over the North Atlantic, suggestive of a possible link to low frequency variations in the strength of the thermohaline circulation. Depending upon the assumed importance of the contributions of ocean dynamics and the time-varying aerosol emissions to the observed trends in global-mean surface temperature, we estimate that up to one third of the late twentieth century warming could have been a consequence of natural variability.     

Are atmospheric biases responsible for the tropical Atlantic SST biases in the CNRM-CM5 coupled model?

In this study, the CNRM-CM5 model is shown to simulate too warm SSTs in the tropical Atlantic as most state-of-the-art CMIP5 models. The warm bias develops within 1 or 2 months in decadal experiments initialised in January using an observationally derived state. To better quantify the role of the atmospheric biases in initiating this warm SST bias, several sensitivity experiments have been performed. In a first set of experiments, the surface solar net heat flux sent to the ocean model is academically corrected over the southeastern tropical Atlantic Ocean. This correction locally reduces the warm SST bias by more than 50 % with some remote impacts over equatorial regions. In contrast, the solar heat flux correction has locally little impact on the spring cooling. A second set of experiments quantifies the role of surface winds, using a nudging technique. When applied in a narrow equatorial region, the wind correction mainly improves the SST annual cycle amplitude along the Equator. It promotes not only the spring cooling along the Equator in preconditioning the mixed-layer depth but also in the southeastern Atlantic along the African coast. These local and remote effects are attributed to the more realistic representation of the oceanic equatorial circulation, driven by corrected winds. These results are consistent with those reported by Wahl et al. (Clim Dyn 36:891–906, 2011) in a very similar study with the Kiel Climate Model. The solar and wind biases have comparable effects in their study, although the importance of off-equatorial winds is less clear in our study. Diagnosing the wind energy flux provides a physical understanding of the equatorial region. When combining the corrections of both the equatorial wind and the southeastern solar heat flux, no obvious feedback between them is evidenced. The present study also emphasizes the need to consider two time-scales, the annual mean and the seasonal cycle, as well as two regions, the equatorial and the southeastern Atlantic regions, to comprehensively address the Atlantic SST bias. As pointed out in Richter (Clim Dyn, doi:10.1007/s00382-012-1624-5, 2013), the need to improve the atmospheric component of the CNRM-CM model is emphasized, even though strong positive coupling feedbacks are highlighted.     

Correction to “the vertical distribution of climate forcings and feedbacks from the surface to top of atmosphere”

We discuss here a mistake in the analysis of Previdi and Liepert (Clim Dyn, 2011). In that article, the surface albedo radiative kernels were calculated incorrectly. We present in this brief comment the corrected albedo kernels. We then use these kernels to compute the surface albedo radiative feedback in climate model simulations driven by increasing carbon dioxide, as in Previdi and Liepert (Clim Dyn, 2011). We find that the use of the corrected albedo kernels does not change the conclusions of our earlier work.     

Modelling considerations for examining the mean and unsteady flow in a simple urban-type street canyon

With very few exceptions, just about all limited area models (LAMs) used in operational NWP and regional climate modeling use the Davies (Q J R Meteorol Soc 102:405–418, 1976) relaxation lateral boundary conditions (LBCs), even though they make no effort to respect the basic mathematics of the problem. While in the early stages of the primitive equation LAM development in the seventies numerous schemes have been proposed and tested, LAM communities have eventually for the most part settled on the relaxation LBCs with few questions asked. An exception is the Eta model used extensively at NCEP and several other centers, in which the Mesinger (Contrib Atmos Phys 50:200–210, 1977) LBCs are used, designed and based on knowledge available before the introduction of the relaxation scheme. They prescribe variables along the outermost row of grid points only; all of them at the inflow points and one less at the outflow points where the tangential velocity components are extrapolated from inside of the model domain. Additional schemes are in place to suppress separation of gravity-wave solutions on C-subgrids of the model’s E-grid. A recent paper of Veljovic et al. (Meteor Zeitschrift 19:237–246, 2010) included three 32-day forecasts done with both the Eta and the relaxation LBCs and the comparison of some of their verification results. Here we extend this experiment by three additional forecasts to arrive at an ensemble of six members run with both schemes, and present a more complete discussion of results. We in addition show results of one of these forecasts in which the linear change of relaxation coefficients was replaced by the change following the recommendation of Lehmann (Meteorol Atmos Phys 52:1–14, 1993). We feel that the results of our two verification schemes strongly suggest the advantage of the Eta over the conventional relaxation scheme, thereby raising doubts as to the justification for its use.     

The Volumetric Particle Approach for Concentration Fluctuations and Chemical Reactions in Lagrangian Particle and Particle-grid Models

A new approach is proposed to predict concentration fluctuations in the framework of one-particle Lagrangian stochastic models. The approach is innovative since it allows the computation of concentration fluctuations in dispersing plumes using a Lagrangian one-particle model with micromixing but with no need for the simulating of background particles. The extension of the model for the treatment of chemically reactive plumes is also accomplished and allows the computation of plume-related chemical reactions in a Lagrangian one-particle framework separately from the background chemical reactions, accounting for the effect of concentration fluctuations on chemical reactions in a general, albeit approximate, manner. These characteristics should make the proposed approach an ideal tool for plume-in-grid calculations in chemistry transport models. The results are compared to the wind-tunnel experiments of Fackrell and Robins (J Fluid Mech, 117:1–26, 1982) for plume dispersion in a neutral boundary layer and to the measurements of Legg et al. (Boundary-Layer Meteorol, 35:277–302, 1986) for line source dispersion in and above a model canopy. Preliminary reacting plume simulations are also shown comparing the model with the experimental results of Brown and Bilger (J Fluid Mech, 312:373–407, 1996; Atmos Environ, 32:611–628, 1998) to demonstrate the feasibility of computing chemical reactions in the proposed framework.     

The improvement of greenhouse gas inventory as a tool for reduction emission uncertainties for operations with oil in the Russian Federation

The high quality inventory is an important step to greenhouse gas emission mitigation. The inventory quality is estimated by means of the uncertainty analysis. The level of uncertainty depends upon the reliability of activity data and the parameters used. An attempt has been made to improve the accuracy of the estimates through a shift from production-based method (IPCC Tier 1) (IPCC 2000) to enhanced combination of production-based and mass balance methods (IPCC Tier 2) (IPCC 2006) in the estimation of emissions from operations with oil that are key in the national greenhouse gas inventory of the Russian Federation. The IPCC Tier 2 (IPCC 2006) was adapted for the national conditions. The greenhouse gas emissions were calculated for 1990 to 2009 with the use of both methods. The quantitative uncertainty assessment of the calculations was performed, and the outcomes were compared. The comparison showed that the estimates made with the use of higher tier method resulted in higher accuracy and lower uncertainties (26 % respectively compared to previously derived 54 %).     

SST and ice sheet impacts on the MIS–13 climate

As a first qualitative assessment tool, LOVECLIM has been used to investigate the interactions between insolation, ice sheets and the East Asian Monsoon at the Marine Isotopic Stage 13 (MIS–13) in work by Yin et?al. (Clim Past 4:79–90, 2008, Clim Past 5:229–243, 2009). The results are in need of validation with a more sophisticated model, which is done in this work with the ARPEGE atmospheric general circulation model. As in the Earth system Model of Intermediate Complexity, LOVECLIM, ARPEGE shows that the northern hemispheric high insolation in summer leads to strong MIS–13 monsoon precipitation. Data from the Chinese Loess Plateau indicate that MIS–13 was locally a warm and humid period (Guo et?al. in Clim Past 5:21–31, 2009; Yin and Guo in Chin Sci Bull 51(2):213–220, 2006). This is confirmed by these General Circulation Model (GCM) results, where the MIS–13 climate is found to be hotter and more humid both in the presence and absence of any added ice sheets. LOVECLIM found that the combined effects of the ice sheets and their accompanying SSTs contribute to more precipitation in eastern China, whilst in ARPEGE the impact is significant in northeastern China. Nonetheless the results of ARPEGE confirm the counter-intuitive results of LOVECLIM where ice sheets contribute to enhance monsoon precipitation. This happens through a topography induced wave propagating through Eurasia with an ascending branch over northeastern China. A feature which is also seen in LOVECLIM. The SST forcing in ARPEGE results in a strong zonal temperature gradient between the North Atlantic and east Eurasia, which in turn triggers an atmospheric gravity wave. This wave induces a blocking Okhotskian high, preventing the northwards penetration of the Meiyu monsoon front. The synergism between the ice sheets and SST is found through the factor separation method, yielding an increase in the Meiyu precipitation, though a reduction of the Changma precipitation. The synergism between the ice sheets and SST play a non-negligible role and should be taken into consideration in GCM studies. Preliminary fully coupled AOGCM results presented here further substantiate the finding of stronger MIS–13 monsoons and a reinforcement from ice sheets. This work increases our understanding of the signals found in the paleo-observations and the dynamics of the complex East Asian Summer Monsoon.     

Replacing coal with wood: sustainable, eco-neutral, conservation harvest of natural tree-fall in old-growth forests

Kleidon (2009) concludes that warm climates impose important constraints on the evolution of large brains relative to body size, confirming our previous hypothesis (Schwartzman and Middendorf 2000). Here we update the case for our hypothesis and present a first approximation estimate of the cooling required for hominin brain size increase using a simple model of heat loss. We conclude that Pleistocene glacial episodes were likely sufficient to serve as prime releasers for emergence of Homo habilis and Homo erectus. In addition, we propose that atmospheric oxygen levels may been an analogous constraint on insect encephalization.     

Can developed economies combat dangerous anthropogenic climate change without near-term reductions from developing economies?

Developing economy greenhouse gas emissions are growing rapidly relative to developed economy emissions (Boden et al. 2010) and developing economies as a group have greater emissions than developed economies. These developments are expected to continue (U.S. Energy Information Administration 2010), which has led some to question the effectiveness of emissions mitigation in developed economies without a commitment to extensive mitigation action from developing economies. One often heard argument against proposed U.S. legislation to limit carbon emissions to mitigate climate change is that, without participation from large developing economies like China and India, stabilizing temperature at 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial (United Nations 2009), or even reducing global emissions levels, would be impossible (Driessen 2009; RPC Energy Facts 2009) or prohibitively expensive (Clarke et al. 2009). Here we show that significantly delayed action by rapidly developing countries is not a reason to forgo mitigation efforts in developed economies. This letter examines the effect of a scenario with no explicit international climate policy and two policy scenarios, full global action and a developing economy delay, on the probability of exceeding various global average temperature changes by 2100. This letter demonstrates that even when developing economies delay any mitigation efforts until 2050 the effect of action by developed economies will appreciably reduce the probability of more extreme levels of temperature change. This paper concludes that early carbon mitigation efforts by developed economies will considerably affect the distribution over future climate change, whether or not developing countries begin mitigation efforts in the near term.     

Compliance and emission trading rules for asymmetric emission uncertainty estimates

Greenhouse gases emission inventories are computed with rather low precision. Moreover, their uncertainty distributions may be asymmetric. This should be accounted for in the compliance and trading rules. In this paper we model the uncertainty of inventories as intervals or using fuzzy numbers. The latter allows us to better shape the uncertainty distributions. The compliance and emission trading rules obtained generalize the results for the symmetric uncertainty distributions that were considered in the earlier papers by the present authors (Nahorski et al., Water Air & Soil Pollution. Focus 7(4–5):539–558, 2007; Nahorski and Horabik, 2007, J Energy Eng 134(2):47–52, 2008). However, unlike in the symmetric distribution, in the asymmetric fuzzy case it is necessary to apply approximations because of nonlinearities in the formulas. The final conclusion is that the interval uncertainty rules can be applied, but with a much higher substitutional noncompliance risk, which is a parameter of the rules.     

Does temperature contain a stochastic trend? Evaluating conflicting statistical results

We evaluate the claim by Gay et al. (Clim Change 94:333–349, 2009) that “surface temperature can be better described as a trend stationary process with a one-time permanent shock” than efforts by Kaufmann et al. (Clim Change 77:249–278, 2006) to model surface temperature as a time series that contains a stochastic trend that is imparted by the time series for radiative forcing. We test this claim by comparing the in-sample forecast generated by the trend stationary model with a one-time permanent shock to the in-sample forecast generated by a cointegration/error correction model that is assumed to be stable over the 1870–2000 sample period. Results indicate that the in-sample forecast generated by the cointegration/error correction model is more accurate than the in-sample forecast generated by the trend stationary model with a one-time permanent shock. Furthermore, Monte Carlo simulations of the cointegration/error correction model generate time series for temperature that are consistent with the trend-stationary-with-a-break result generated by Gay et al. (Clim Change 94:333–349, 2009), while the time series for radiative forcing cannot be modeled as trend stationary with a one-time shock. Based on these results, we argue that modeling surface temperature as a time series that shares a stochastic trend with radiative forcing offers the possibility of greater insights regarding the potential causes of climate change and efforts to slow its progression.     

Critical issues for the calculation of the social cost of CO2: why the estimates from PAGE09 are higher than those from PAGE2002

PAGE09 is an updated version of the PAGE2002 integrated assessment model (Hope 2011a). The default PAGE09 model gives a mean estimate of the social cost of CO₂ (SCCO₂) of $106 per tonne of CO₂, compared to $81 from the PAGE2002 model used in the Stern review (Stern 2007). The increase is the net result of several improvements that have been incorporated into the PAGE09 model in response to the critical debate around the Stern review: the adoption of the A1B socio-economic scenario, rather than A2 whose population assumptions are now thought to be implausible; the use of ranges for the two components of the discount rate, rather than the single values used in the Stern review; a distribution for the climate sensitivity that is consistent with the latest estimates from IPCC 2007a; less adaptation than in PAGE2002, particularly in the economic sector, which was criticised for possibly being over-optimistic; and a more theoretically-justified basis of valuation that gives results appropriate to a representative agent from the focus region, the EU. The effect of each of these adjustments is quantified and explained.     

Comment on “Trends and low frequency variability of extra-tropical cyclone activity in the ensemble of twentieth century reanalysis” by Xiaolan L. Wang,Y. Feng,G. P. Compo,V. R. Swail,F. W. Zwiers,R. J. Allan,and P. D. Sardeshmukh,Climate Dynamics, 2012

The main subject of this article is to comment on the issue of storminess trends derived from the twentieth century reanalysis (20CR) and from observations in the North Atlantic region written about in Wang et al. (Clim Dyn 40(11–12):2775–2800, 2012). The statement that the 20CR estimates would be consistent with storminess derived from pressure-based proxies does not hold for the time prior to 1950.     

Comment on “Kinetics of the reactions of Cl atoms with 2-buten-1-ol, 2-methyl-2-propen-1-ol, and 3-methyl-2-buten-1-ol as a function of temperature” by Rodriguez et al. (J. Atmos. Chem. (2008) 59:187–197)

The Arrhenius expressions and the data plotted in Figure 2 of Rodriguez et al. 2008 give rate coefficients of approximately 2?×?10^-8 cm³ molecule^-1 s^-1 at 255 K. Such values are approximately two orders of magnitude larger than expected from simple collision theory (Finlayson-Pitts and Pitts 1986). The rate coefficients reported at sub-ambient temperatures are substantially greater than the gas kinetic limit and are not physically plausible. The rate coefficients reported by Rodriguez et al. imply a long range attraction between the reactants which is not reasonable for reaction of neutral species such as chlorine atoms and unsaturated alcohols. We also note that the pre-exponential A factors (10^-23-10^-20) and activation energies (?15 kcal mol^-1) are not physically plausible. We conclude that there are large systematic errors in the study by Rodriguez et al. (Atmos Chem 59:187–197, 2008).