Hill, DJ, Haywood, AM, Hunter, SJ et al. (16 more authors) (2014) Evaluating the dominant components of warming in Pliocene climate simulations. Climate of the Past, 10 (1). 79 - 90. ISSN 1814-9324
Abstract
The Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP) is the first coordinated climate model comparison for a warmer palaeoclimate with atmospheric CO significantly higher than pre-industrial concentrations. The simulations of the mid-Pliocene warm period show global warming of between 1.8 and 3.6 °C above pre-industrial surface air temperatures, with significant polar amplification. Here we perform energy balance calculations on all eight of the coupled ocean-atmosphere simulations within PlioMIP Experiment 2 to evaluate the causes of the increased temperatures and differences between the models. In the tropics simulated warming is dominated by greenhouse gas increases, with the cloud component of planetary albedo enhancing the warming in most of the models, but by widely varying amounts. The responses to mid-Pliocene climate forcing in the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes are substantially different between the climate models, with the only consistent response being a warming due to increased greenhouse gases. In the high latitudes all the energy balance components become important, but the dominant warming influence comes from the clear sky albedo, only partially offset by the increases in the cooling impact of cloud albedo. This demonstrates the importance of specified ice sheet and high latitude vegetation boundary conditions and simulated sea ice and snow albedo feedbacks. The largest components in the overall uncertainty are associated with clouds in the tropics and polar clear sky albedo, particularly in sea ice regions. These simulations show that albedo feedbacks, particularly those of sea ice and ice sheets, provide the most significant enhancements to high latitude warming in the Pliocene.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) 2014, Hill, DJ, Haywood, AM, Hunter, SJ, Lunt, DJ, Bragg, FJ, Contoux, C, Ramstein, G, Jost, A, Stepanek, C, Lohmann, G, Sohl, L, Chandler, MA, Rosenbloom, NA, Otto-Bliesner, BL, Chan, W-L, Abe-Ouchi, A, Kamae, Y, Ueda, H and Zhang, Z. This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 3.0) licence, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 10 Sep 2014 10:26 |
Last Modified: | 18 Jan 2018 05:56 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/cp-10-79-2014 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | European Geosciences Union |
Identification Number: | 10.5194/cp-10-79-2014 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:80157 |