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Changes in ENSO and Associated Overturning Circulations from Enhanced Greenhouse Gases by the End of the Twentieth Century.

American Meteorological Society

With data from 12 coupled models in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate under year 2000 greenhouse gas (GHG) + aerosol forcing was compared with climate under preindustrial conditions. In the tropical Pacific, the warming in the mean sea surface temperatures (SST) was found to have an El Niño–like pattern, while both the equatorial zonal overturning circulation and the meridional overturning circulation weakened under increased GHG forcing. For the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the asymmetry in the SST anomalies between El Niño and La Niña was found to be enhanced under increased GHG, for both the ensemble model data and the observed data (1900–99). Enhanced asymmetry between El Niño and La Niña was also manifested in the anomalies of the zonal wind stress, the equatorial undercurrent, and the meridional overturning circulation in the increased GHG simulations. The enhanced asymmetry in the model SST anomalies was mainly caused by the greatly intensified vertical nonlinear dynamic heating (NDH) anomaly (i.e., product of the vertical velocity anomaly and the negative vertical temperature gradient anomaly) during El Niño (but not during La Niña). Under increased GHG, the enhanced positive NDH anomalies during El Niño, when time averaged over the whole record, would change the SST mean state by an El Niño–like pattern. Copyright 2008 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyright@ametsoc.org.

Text

2016-11-10

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/33330

Ye, Zhengqing; Hsieh, William W. 2008. Changes in ENSO and Associated Overturning Circulations from Enhanced Greenhouse Gases by the End of the Twentieth Century. Journal of Climate 21(22) 5745-5763.

Reviewed

Hsieh, William W.

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