Professor Myles Allen CBE FRS

Abstract:

We examine the sensitivity of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) index to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations in integrations of five climate models (the Hadley Centre coupled models (HadCM2 and HadCM3), the European Centre/Hamburg models (ECHAM3 and ECHAM4), and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies stratosphere-resolving (GISS-S) model) and in the National Centers for Environmental Prediction reanalysis. With the exception of HadCM2 all the models show a significant positive AO response to greenhouse gas forcing, but in the models lacking a well-resolved stratosphere that response is smaller than observed. In these models the AO index is linearly dependent on the radiative forcing, even up to ∼20 times current CO2 levels. By contrast, the GISS-S stratosphere-resolving model shows an AO response comparable to that observed, but the sensitivity of the model to further increases in forcing is reduced when CO2 levels exceed ∼1.5 times preindustrial values. It has been suggested that greenhouse gas forcing results in the equatorward deflection of planetary waves, which leads to a cooling and strengthening of the polar vortex and hence an increase in the surface Arctic Oscillation. In the observations the number of sudden warmings has reduced dramatically, consistent with this planetary wave effect, leading to a large mean cooling of the vortex. However, neither the GISS-S nor the HadCM3 models are able to reproduce the observed temperature changes, suggesting that this explanation for the impact of the inclusion of a stratosphere in the model may be incomplete.

Abstract:

Anthropogenic influences on surface temperature over the second half of the twentieth century are examined using output from two general circulation models (HadCM2 and ECHAM3). Optimal detection techniques involve the comparison of observed temperature changes with those simulated by a climate model, using a control integration to test the null hypothesis that all the observed changes are due to natural variability. Two recent studies have examined the influence of greenhouse gases and the direct effect of sulfate aerosol on surface temperature using output from the same two climate models but with many differences in the methods applied. Both detected overall anthropogenic influence on climate, but results on the separate detection of greenhouse gas and sulfate aerosol influences were different. This paper concludes that the main differences between the results can be explained by the season over which temperatures were averaged, the length of the climatology from which anomalies were taken, and the use of a time-evolving signal pattern as opposed to a spatial pattern of temperature trends. This demonstration of consistency increases confidence in the equivalence of the methodologies in other respects, and helps to synthesize results from the two approaches. Including information on the temporal evolution of the response to different forcings allows sulfate aerosol influence to be detected more easily in HadCM2, whereas focusing on spatial patterns gives better detectability in ECHAM3.