Journal
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 417-423Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1726
Keywords
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Funding
- Office of Science (BER) US Department of Energy [DE-FG02-07ER64469]
- US National Science Foundation [1049219]
- Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)
- Australian Research Council
- Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement
- Australian Climate Change Science Program
- CSIRO Office of Chief Executive Science Leader programme
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [1049238] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [1049219] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) is the largest rainband in the Southern Hemisphere and provides most of the rainfall to southwest Pacific island nations. In spite of various modelling efforts, it remains uncertain how the SPCZ will respond to greenhouse warming. Using a hierarchy of climate models we show that the uncertainty of SPCZ rainfall projections in present-generation climate models can be explained as a result of two competing mechanisms. Higher tropical sea surface temperatures lead to an overall increase of atmospheric moisture and rainfall whereas weaker sea surface temperature gradients dynamically shift the SPCZ northeastward and promote summer drying in areas of the southwest Pacific. On the basis of a multi-model ensemble of 76 greenhouse warming experiments and for moderate tropical warming of 1-2 degrees C we estimate a 6% decrease of SPCZ rainfall with a multi-model uncertainty exceeding +/- 20%. For stronger tropical warming exceeding 3 degrees C, a tendency for a wetter SPCZ region is identified.
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