Upper tropospheric warming intensifies sea surface warming

One of the robust features in the future projections made by the state-of-the-art climate models is that the highest warming rate occurs in the upper-troposphere especially in the tropics. It has been suggested that more warming in the upper-troposphere than the lower-troposphere should exert a dampening effect on the sea surface warming associated with the negative lapse rate feedback. This study, however, demonstrates that the tropical upper-tropospheric warming (UTW) tends to trap more moisture in the lower troposphere and weaken the surface wind speed, both contributing to reduce the upward surface latent heat flux so as to trigger the initial sea surface warming. We refer to this as a ‘top-down’ warming mechanism. The rise of tropospheric moisture together with the positive water vapor feedback enhance the downward longwave radiation to the surface and facilitate strengthening the initial sea surface warming. Meanwhile, the rise of sea surface temperature (SST) can feed back to intensify the initial UTW through the moist adiabatic adjustment, completing a positive UTW–SST warming feedback. The proposed ‘top-down’ warming mechanism and the associated positive UTW–SST warming feedback together affect the surface global warming rate and also have important implications for understanding the past and future changes of precipitation, clouds and atmospheric circulations.