Journal
ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
Volume 50, Issue 1, Pages 31-43Publisher
KOREAN METEOROLOGICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1007/s13143-014-0024-7
Keywords
Polar amplification; general circulation; equable climate
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Funding
- Seoul National University, the Republic of Korea
- NSF, USA [AGS-1139970]
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Records of the past climates show a wide range of values of the equator-to-pole temperature gradient, with an apparent universal relationship between the temperature gradient and the globalmean temperature: relative to a reference climate, if the global-mean temperature is higher (lower), the greatest warming (cooling) occurs at the polar regions. This phenomenon is known as polar amplification. Understanding this equator-to-pole temperature gradient is fundamental to climate and general circulation, yet there is no established theory from a perspective of the general circulation. Here, a general circulation-based theory for polar amplification is presented. Recognizing the fact that most of the available potential energy (APE) in the atmosphere is untapped, this theory invokes that La-Nia-like tropical heating can help tap APE and warm the Arctic by exciting poleward and upward propagating Rossby waves.
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