Journal
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
Volume 35, Issue 11, Pages 3445-3457Publisher
AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0656.1
Keywords
Aerosol radiative effect; Climate Change; Climate variability; Sea surface temperature; Salinity
Categories
Funding
- U.S. National Science Foundation [OCE-2048336]
- National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This study utilizes a pattern recognition method to isolate the forced patterns of anthropogenic aerosols on surface ocean and atmospheric variables. The results show that aerosol-forced responses are dominated by two modes, one associated with the historical change in global mean aerosol concentrations and the other with the transition of aerosol sources.
Unlike greenhouse gases (GHGs), anthropogenic aerosol (AA) concentrations have increased and then decreased over the past century or so, with the timing of the peak concentration varying in different regions. To date, it has been challenging to separate the climate impact of AAs from that due to GHGs and background internal variability. We use a pattern recognition method, taking advantage of spatiotemporal covariance information, to isolate the forced patterns for the surface ocean and associated atmospheric variables from the all-but-one forcing Community Earth System Model ensembles. We find that the aerosol-forced responses are dominated by two leading modes, with one associated with the historical increase and future decrease of global mean aerosol concentrations (dominated by the Northern Hemisphere sources) and the other due to the transition of the primary sources of AA from the west to the east and also from Northern Hemisphere extratropical regions to tropical regions. In particular, the aerosol transition effect, to some extent compensating the global mean effect, exhibits a zonal asymmetry in the surface temperature and salinity responses. We also show that this transition effect dominates the total AA effect during recent decades, e.g., 1967-2007.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available