The impacts of eliminating the meridional gradients in incoming solar radiation and water vapor on Earth's climate
Abstract
The meridional gradients in incoming solar radiation and in atmospheric water vapor play fundamental roles in determining Earth's climate. We use a gray-radiation general circulation model to investigate how Earth's climate is affected by eliminating these gradients, while keeping the global-mean insolation and long-wave optical depth constant. Experiments are conducted in which each of the gradients is eliminated separately, and in which both are eliminated simultaneously. We focus on how the model's global-mean temperature, meridional energy transport and large-scale circulation are affected by these changes, while presenting simple arguments to explain the results. We also investigate how the two gradients affect the model's response to global warming-like perturbations, including their impacts on the polar amplification of warming. Besides deepening our understanding of Earth's present and future climate, our results are also relevant for the climates of Earth-like planets with no atmospheric water vapor.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.A51H2168L
- Keywords:
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- 3305 Climate change and variability;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3319 General circulation;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3373 Tropical dynamics;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 1620 Climate dynamics;
- GLOBAL CHANGE