Uncertainty in projections of the South Asian summer monsoon under global warming by CMIP6 models: Role of tropospheric meridional thermal contrast

Driven by the increase in CO₂concentration,climate models reach a consensus that the large-scale circulation of the South Asian summer monsoon(SASM) becomes weakened but with different magnitudes.This study investigates the major uncertainty sources of the SASM response to an abrupt quadrupling of CO₂(abrupt-4×CO₂)in 18 models of phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project.The projected weakening of the SASM indicated by both zonal and meridional monsoon circulation indices is closely linked to decreases in the meridional gradient of upper-tropospheric temperature between Eurasia and the Indian Ocean(EUTT-IUTT).A climate feedback-response analysis method is applied to linearly decompose the uncertainty of changes in EUTT-IUTT into the partial changes due to external forcing and internal processes of the earth-atmosphere column.Results show that the uncertainty of changes in EUTT-IUTT is contributed positively by the dominant atmospheric dynamic process,followed by the cloud shortwave radiative effect,and negatively by the surface latent heat flux and cloud longwave radiative effect.Contributions from CO₂forcing and other internal processes including albedo and water vapor feedbacks,oceanic heat storage,and sensible heat flux are found to be minor.