Sources of the Intermodel Spread in Projected Global Monsoon Hydrological Sensitivity

  • Jian Cao
  • , Bo Wang
  • , Bin Wang
  • , Haikun Zhao
  • , Chao Wang
  • , Ying Han

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

The projected monsoon hydrological sensitivity, namely, the precipitation change rate per kelvin of global warming, shows substantial intermodel spread among 40 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 models. The hydrological sensitivity of the Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon is negatively correlated with that of the Southern Hemisphere summer monsoon. The intermodel spread of the Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon hydrological sensitivity is mainly attributed to the projected interhemispheric temperature gradients and the associated low-level cross-equatorial flows. The intermodel spread of the Afro-Asia summer monsoon sensitivity is rooted in the projected continent-ocean thermal gradients, while the spread of the North American monsoon sensitivity is related to the projected sea surface temperature pattern in the tropical eastern Pacific and Atlantic. These findings suggest that further constraining monsoon hydrological sensitivity requires a better projection of the warming rate between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and between the land and ocean, and the sea surface warming pattern in the tropical eastern Pacific and Atlantic.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere2020GL089560
JournalGeophysical Research Letters
Volume47
Issue number18
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 28 2020

Funding

Comments from two anonymous reviewers are deeply appreciated. This work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China of Jiangsu Province (BK20180812 and BK20170941), the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFA0603801), the Startup Foundation for Introducing Talent of NUIST (Grant 2018r063), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41730961 and 41922033). The authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for the CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. This is Publication No. 1471 of the IPRC, Publication No. 11133 of the SOEST, and Publication No. 323 of the Earth System Modeling Center (ESMC). Comments from two anonymous reviewers are deeply appreciated. This work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China of Jiangsu Province (BK20180812 and BK20170941), the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFA0603801), the Startup Foundation for Introducing Talent of NUIST (Grant 2018r063), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41730961 and 41922033). The authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for the CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. This is Publication No. 1471 of the IPRC, Publication No. 11133 of the SOEST, and Publication No. 323 of the Earth System Modeling Center (ESMC).

Keywords

  • global monsoon
  • hydrological sensitivity
  • monsoon circulation

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