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GFDL Research Highlights

February 5th, 2015 - Tropical Climate Change Control of the Lower Stratospheric Circulation

Tropical air has less ozone than polar air, even though the tropical stratosphere is where most atmospheric ozone is produced. The Brewer-Dobson circulation is considered key to understanding this apparent contrast. It also brings water vapor, aerosols and other species from the troposphere up into the stratosphere. The strength of the Brewer-Dobson circulation directly affects the thermal structure of the stratosphere and upper troposphere, and impacts the transport and distribution of important climate-influencing constituents including stratospheric water vapor, ozone, and volcanic aerosols. Read More…

December 16th, 2014 - Drivers of trophic amplification of ocean productivity trends in a changing climate

Earth System Models (ESMs) project that climate change will lead to approximately 1-10% declines in global ocean phytoplankton productivity by the end of the 21st century, under high carbon emissions scenarios. This decline results from projected increases in ocean stratification under global warming, which hinders the supply of deep ocean nutrients to the well-lit surface ocean.
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October 12th, 2014 - Karakoram snowfall less sensitive to warming than Himalayas due to a unique seasonal cycle

The high mountains of Asia, including the Karakoram, Himalayas, and Tibetan Plateau, combine to form a region of perplexing hydroclimate changes. Glaciers in the Karakoram region have exhibited mass stability or even expansion, contrasting with glacial mass loss across the nearby Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau. This suggests that different regional snowfall or temperature signals might be detected in the Karakoram region. However, the remote location, complex terrain, and multi-country fabric of high-mountain Asia have made it difficult to maintain longer-term monitoring systems of the meteorological components that can influence glacial change.
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September 29th, 2014 - Seasonal- and annual-mean precipitation extremes occurring during 2013: A U.S. focused analysis

Extreme seasonal/annual precipitation, defined here as ranking first, second, or third highest or lowest in the record of at least 100 years, occurred in several continental U.S. regions during 2013. The authors of this study used CMIP5 models to simulate internal climate variability and the response to historical anthropogenic and natural forcings, for the Northern Tier and the Upper Midwest regions of the U.S. This study suggests that, for these two regions, extreme annual or seasonal positive precipitation anomalies over the U.S. were at least partly attributable to a combination of anthropogenic and natural forcing.
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September 17th, 2014 - Retrieval of Tropical Storm Statistics by Combining Data with a High-Resolution Coupled Model

In order to produce better seasonal-to-interannual climate predictions, GFDL scientists explored improvements in the method of initializing a high-resolution coupled model. Traditionally, when observations are assimilated into a high-resolution coupled model, small-scale cyclones tend to get filtered out in the process of making corrections to the large-scale background. GFDL scientists pioneered a method of processing the large-scale background and the small-scale perturbations separately in a cyclone-permitting model.
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August 22nd, 2014 - Predicting a decadal shift in North Atlantic climate variability using the GFDL forecast system

The goals of this research were to assess the role of AMOC in global climate and identify the predictability of the associated climate impacts. Decadal prediction experiments were conducted as part of CMIP5 using a prototype GFDL-CM2.1 forecast system. The abrupt warming of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre (SPG), observed in the mid-1990s, was used as a case study to evaluate the forecast capabilities of the model, and to better understand the reasons for the observed changes.
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August 13th, 2014 - Seasonal Forecasting of Regional Tropical Cyclone Activity

Tropical cyclones (TCs, which include hurricanes and typhoons) are a major climate hazard across the Northern Hemisphere, and have exhibited variability and change on year-to-year timescales. Understanding and predicting future year-to-year TC activity is central to NOAA’s mission and highly relevant to society. Of particular relevance for decision support is predicting seasonal activity on regional spatial scales (scales smaller than the entire basin) – a goal that has remained elusive.
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July 21st, 2014 - Rapid subsurface warming and circulation changes of Antarctic coastal waters by poleward shifting winds

Projected changes in the winds circling the Antarctic may accelerate global sea level rise significantly more than previously estimated. Changes to Antarctic winds may have a profound impact on warming ocean temperatures under the ice shelves along the coastline of West and East Antarctic. Projected Antarctic wind shifts were included in a detailed global ocean model, and the authors found water up to 4°C warmer than current temperatures rose up to meet the base of the Antarctic ice shelves. The projected sub-surface warming is twice as large as previously estimated, on average, and it affects almost all of coastal Antarctica. This relatively warm water provides a huge reservoir of melt potential right near the grounding lines of ice shelves around Antarctica. It could lead to a massive increase in the rate of ice sheet melt, with direct consequences for global sea level rise.
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July 13th, 2014 - Regional rainfall decline in Australia attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gases and ozone levels

A suite of simulations, done with a new high-resolution climate model (CM2.5) developed at GFDL, were used to study the observed long-term decline of winter rainfall over parts of southern Australia. In response to anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases and reduction in stratospheric ozone, the model is able to capture many aspects of the observed drying, especially over southwest Australia. The model projects a continued decline in winter rainfall throughout the rest of the 21st century, with significant implications for regional water resources.
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June 26th, 2014 - Trajectory sensitivity of the transient climate response to cumulative carbon emission

The insensitivity of the global climate response once emissions cease in simplified coupled climate models has been used to argue for lack of committed warming based on past carbon emissions. Additional studies have also demonstrated that the cessation of carbon emissions results in a stabilization or decrease of global mean surface air temperature. Such studies generally assume either a 1%/year increase or an instantaneous doubling/quadrupling of atmospheric CO2.
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