TY - JOUR
T1 - Weakening of Upward Mass but Intensification of Upward Energy Transport in a Warming Climate
AU - Wu, Yutian
AU - Lu, Jian
AU - Pauluis, Olivier
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Dr. Pengfei Zhang for his help in downloading the daily CMIP5 model output. The authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the U.S. Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. The CMIP5 data used in this study are freely available through the Earth System Grid Federation (https://esgf-node.llnl.gov).
Publisher Copyright:
©2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2019/2/16
Y1 - 2019/2/16
N2 - How the atmospheric overturning circulation is projected to change is important for understanding changes in mass and energy budget. This study analyzes the overturning circulation by sorting the upward mass transport in terms of the moist static energy (MSE) of air parcels in an ensemble of coupled climate models. It is found that, in response to greenhouse gas increases, the upward transport of MSE increases in order to balance the increase in radiative cooling of the mass transport. At the same time, the overall mass transport decreases. The increase in energy transport and decrease in mass transport can be explained by the fact that the MSE of rising air parcels increases more rapidly than that of subsiding air, thus allowing for a weaker overturning circulation to transport more energy.
AB - How the atmospheric overturning circulation is projected to change is important for understanding changes in mass and energy budget. This study analyzes the overturning circulation by sorting the upward mass transport in terms of the moist static energy (MSE) of air parcels in an ensemble of coupled climate models. It is found that, in response to greenhouse gas increases, the upward transport of MSE increases in order to balance the increase in radiative cooling of the mass transport. At the same time, the overall mass transport decreases. The increase in energy transport and decrease in mass transport can be explained by the fact that the MSE of rising air parcels increases more rapidly than that of subsiding air, thus allowing for a weaker overturning circulation to transport more energy.
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U2 - 10.1029/2018GL081399
DO - 10.1029/2018GL081399
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85061259820
VL - 46
SP - 1672
EP - 1680
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
SN - 0094-8276
IS - 3
ER -