Abstract

This study analyzes the response of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) to different CO₂ concentrations and two ice sheet configurations in simulations with the coupled climate model MPI-ESM. With preindustrial (PI) ice sheets, there are two different AMOC states within the studied CO₂ range: one state with a strong and deep upper overturning cell at high CO₂ concentrations and one state with a weak and shallow upper cell at low CO₂ concentrations. Changes in AMOC variability with decreasing CO₂ indicate two stability thresholds. The strong state is stable above the first threshold near 217 ppm, and the weak state is stable below the second threshold near 190 ppm. Between the two thresholds, both states are marginally unstable, and the AMOC oscillates between them on millennial time scales. The weak AMOC state is stable when Antarctic Bottom Water becomes dense and salty enough to replace North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) in the deep North Atlantic and when the density gain over the North Atlantic becomes too weak to sustain continuous NADW formation. With Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ice sheets, the density gain over the North Atlantic and the northward salt transport are enhanced with respect to the PI ice sheet case. This enables active NADW formation and a strong AMOC for the entire range of studied CO₂ concentrations. The AMOC variability indicates that the simulated AMOC is far away from a stability threshold with LGM ice sheets. The nonlinear relationship among AMOC, CO₂, and prescribed ice sheets provides an explanation for the large intermodel spread of AMOC states found in previous coupled LGM simulations.

Abstract

Some of the interactions and feedbacks between the atmosphere, thermohaline circulation, and sea ice are illustrated using a simple process model. A simplified version of the annual-mean coupled ocean–atmosphere box model of Nakamura, Stone, and Marotzke is modified to include a parameterization of sea ice. The model includes the thermodynamic effects of sea ice and allows for variable coverage. It is found that the addition of sea ice introduces feedbacks that have a destabilizing influence on the thermohaline circulation: Sea ice insulates the ocean from the atmosphere, creating colder air temperatures at high latitudes, which cause larger atmospheric eddy heat and moisture transports and weaker oceanic heat transports. These in turn lead to thicker ice coverage and hence establish a positive feedback. The results indicate that generally in colder climates, the presence of sea ice may lead to a significant destabilization of the thermohaline circulation. Brine rejection by sea ice plays no important role in this model’s dynamics. The net destabilizing effect of sea ice in this model is the result of two positive feedbacks and one negative feedback and is shown to be model dependent. To date, the destabilizing feedback between atmospheric and oceanic heat fluxes, mediated by sea ice, has largely been neglected in conceptual studies of thermohaline circulation stability, but it warrants further investigation in more realistic models.

Abstract

To examine the long-term stability of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, idealized simulations are carried out with the climate model ECHAM5/Max Planck Institute Ocean Model (MPI-OM). Atmospheric CO₂ concentration is increased over 2000 years from preindustrial levels to quadrupling, is then kept constant for 5940 years, is afterward decreased over 2000 years to preindustrial levels, and is finally kept constant for 3940 years.

Despite these very slow changes, the sea ice response significantly lags behind the CO₂ concentration change. This lag, which is caused by the ocean's thermal inertia, implies that the sea ice equilibrium response to increasing CO₂ concentration is substantially underestimated by transient simulations. The sea ice response to CO₂ concentration change is not truly hysteretic and is in principle reversible.

The authors find no lag in the evolution of Arctic sea ice relative to changes in annual-mean Northern Hemisphere surface temperature. The summer sea ice cover changes linearly with respect to both CO₂ concentration and temperature, while the Arctic winter sea ice cover shows a rapid transition to a very low sea ice coverage. This rapid transition of winter sea ice is associated with a sharply enhanced ice–albedo feedback and a sudden onset of convective-cloud feedback in the Arctic.

The Antarctic sea ice cover retreats continuously without any rapid transition during the warming. Compared to Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice shows a much more strongly lagged response to changes in CO₂ concentration. It even lags behind the surface temperature change, which is caused by a different response of ocean deep convection during the warming and the cooling periods.

Abstract

The literature offers conflicting findings about which regions contribute most to increases in the global radiative feedback after a forcing increase. This paper explains the disagreement by discriminating between two common definitions of the local feedback, which use either local temperature or global temperature as their basis. Although the two definitions of feedback have been previously compared in aquaplanet models with slab oceans, here the definitions are compared for the first time in an atmosphere–ocean general circulation model (MPI-ESM1.2) integrated over four doublings of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations. Large differences between the definitions can be seen in all feedbacks, but especially in the temperature and water vapor feedbacks. Differences of up to 10 W m⁻² K⁻¹ over the Southern Ocean can be explained by the pattern of surface warming, which weights the local feedbacks and reduces their contribution to the global mean. This finding is, however, dependent on the resolution of analysis, because the local-temperature definition is mathematically inconsistent across spatial scales. Furthermore, attempts to estimate the effect of “pattern weighting” by separating local feedbacks and warming patterns at the gridcell level fail, because the radiative change in key tropical regions is also determined by tropospheric stability via the global circulation. These findings indicate that studies of regional feedback change are more sensitive to methodological choices than previously thought, and that the tropics most likely dominate regional contributions to global radiative feedback change on decadal to centennial time scales.

Abstract

A low-resolution coupled ocean–atmosphere general circulation model (OAGCM) is used to study the characteristics of the large-scale ocean circulation and its climatic impacts in a series of global coupled aquaplanet experiments. Three configurations, designed to produce fundamentally different ocean circulation regimes, are considered. The first has no obstruction to zonal flow, the second contains a low barrier that blocks zonal flow in the ocean at all latitudes, creating a single enclosed basin, while the third contains a gap in the barrier to allow circumglobal flow at high southern latitudes.

Warm greenhouse climates with a global average air surface temperature of around 27°C result in all cases. Equator-to-pole temperature gradients are shallower than that of a current climate simulation. While changes in the land configuration cause regional changes in temperature, winds, and rainfall, heat transports within the system are little affected. Inhibition of all ocean transport on the aquaplanet leads to a reduction in global mean surface temperature of 8°C, along with a sharpening of the meridional temperature gradient. This results from a reduction in global atmospheric water vapor content and an increase in tropical albedo, both of which act to reduce global surface temperatures.

Fitting a simple radiative model to the atmospheric characteristics of the OAGCM solutions suggests that a simpler atmosphere model, with radiative parameters chosen a priori based on the changing surface configuration, would have produced qualitatively different results. This implies that studies with reduced complexity atmospheres need to be guided by more complex OAGCM results on a case-by-case basis.

Abstract

As a contribution to a detailed evaluation of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-type coupled climate models against observations, this study analyzes Arctic sea ice parameters simulated by the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) fully coupled climate model ECHAM5/Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology Hamburg Primitive Equation Ocean Model (MPI-OM) for the period from 1980 to 1999 and compares them with observations collected during field programs and by satellites. Results of the coupled run forced by twentieth-century CO₂ concentrations show significant discrepancies during summer months with respect to observations of the spatial distribution of the ice concentration and ice thickness. Equally important, the coupled run lacks interannual variability in all ice and Arctic Ocean parameters. Causes for such big discrepancies arise from errors in the ECHAM5/MPI-OM atmosphere and associated errors in surface forcing fields (especially wind stress). This includes mean bias pattern caused by an artificial circulation around the geometric North Pole in its atmosphere, as well as insufficient atmospheric variability in the ECHAM5/MPI-OM model, for example, associated with Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO). In contrast, the identical coupled ocean–ice model, when driven by NCEP–NCAR reanalysis fields, shows much increased skill in its ice and ocean circulation parameters. However, common to both model runs is too strong an ice export through the Fram Strait and a substantially biased heat content in the interior of the Arctic Ocean, both of which may affect sea ice budgets in centennial projections of the Arctic climate system.

Abstract

Simple proem models have been developed to investigate the role of atmosphere-ocean feedbacks in the stability of the current mode of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic. A positive feedback between the meridional atmospheric transport of moisture and the high-latitude sinking thermohaline circulation (EMT feedback) has been found to help destabilize the latter. The minimum perturbation required to shut off the high-latitude sinking is considerably smaller when this feedback is included. Also, the high-latitude sinking is shut off much faster with this feedback than without it, given a perturbation of the same magnitude. There is also a strong positive feedback between atmospheric heat transport and the thermohaline circulation, but this can be modeled accurately on the global scale by using a properly tuned Newtonian cooling law for the surface beat flux. Idealized flux adjustment experiments suggest that the sensitivity of the real climate is not represented well in coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models that require 0(1) adjustments in the surface fluxes of heat and freshwater to simulate the current climate.

Abstract

A global ocean general circulation model of idealized geometry, combined with an atmospheric model based on observed transports of heat, momentum, and moisture, is used to explore the sensitivity of the global conveyor belt circulation to the surface freshwater fluxes, in particular the effects of meridional atmospheric moisture transports. The numerical results indicate that the equilibrium strength of the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation increases as the global freshwater transports increase. However, the global deep water formation—that is, the sum of the NADW and the Southern Ocean Deep Water formation rates—is relatively insensitive to changes of the freshwater flux.

Perturbations to the meridional moisture transports of each hemisphere identify equatorially asymmetric effects of the freshwater fluxes. The results are consistent with box model results that the equilibrium NADW formation is primarily controlled by the magnitude of the Southern Hemisphere freshwater flux. However, the results show that the Northern Hemisphere freshwater flux has a strong impact on the transient behavior of the North Atlantic overturning. Increasing this flux leads to a collapse of the conveyor belt circulation, but the collapse is delayed if the Southern Hemisphere flux also increases. The perturbation experiments also illustrate that the rapidity of collapse is affected by random fluctuations in the wind stress field.

Abstract

A hybrid coupled ocean–atmosphere model is used to investigate the stability of the thermohaline circulation (THC) to an increase in the surface freshwater forcing in the presence of interactive meridional transports in the atmosphere. The ocean component is the idealized global general circulation model used in Part I. The atmospheric model assumes fixed latitudinal structure of the heat and moisture transports, and the amplitudes are calculated separately for each hemisphere from the large-scale sea surface temperature (SST) and SST gradient, using parameterizations based on baroclinic stability theory. The ocean–atmosphere heat and freshwater exchanges are calculated as residuals of the steady-state atmospheric budgets.

Owing to the ocean component’s weak heat transport, the model has too strong a meridional SST gradient when driven with observed atmospheric meridional transports. When the latter are made interactive, the conveyor belt circulation collapses. A flux adjustment is introduced in which the efficiency of the atmospheric transports is lowered to match the too low efficiency of the ocean component.

The feedbacks between the THC and both the atmospheric heat and moisture transports are positive, whether atmospheric transports are interactive in the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere, or both. However, the feedbacks operate differently in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, because the Pacific THC dominates in the Southern Hemisphere, and deep water formation in the two hemispheres is negatively correlated. The feedbacks in the two hemispheres do not necessarily reinforce each other because they have opposite effects on low-latitude temperatures. The model is qualitatively similar in stability to one with conventional “additive” flux adjustment, but quantitatively more stable.

Abstract

The implications are investigated of representing ocean gyre circulations by a diffusion term in the Stommel and Rooth box models of the thermohaline circulation (THC) in one and two hemispheres, respectively. The approach includes mostly analytical solution and study of the bifurcation structure, but also numerical integration and feedback analysis. Sufficient diffusion (gyre strength) eliminates multiple equilibria from either model, highlighting the need for accurate gyre circulation strength in general circulation models (GCMs) when considering the potential for abrupt climate change associated with THC shutdown.

With diffusion, steady-state flow strength in the Rooth model depends on freshwater forcing (i.e., implied atmospheric water vapor transport) in both hemispheres, not only on that in the upwelling hemisphere, as in the nondiffusive case. With asymmetric freshwater forcing, two solutions (strong stable and weak unstable) are found with sinking in the hemisphere with stronger forcing and one solution with sinking in the other hemisphere. Under increased freshwater forcing the two solutions in the hemisphere with stronger forcing meet in a saddle-node bifurcation (if diffusion is sufficiently strong to prevent a subcritical Hopf bifurcation first), followed by flow reversal. Thus, the bifurcation structure with respect to freshwater forcing of the diffusive Rooth model of two-hemisphere THC is similar to that of the Stommel model of single-hemisphere THC, albeit with a very different dynamical interpretation. Gyre circulations stabilize high-latitude sinking in the Stommel model. In the Rooth model, gyre circulations only stabilize high-latitude sinking if the freshwater forcing is weaker in the sinking hemisphere than in the upwelling hemisphere, by an amount that increases with diffusion. The values of diffusion and freshwater forcing at which qualitative change in behavior occurs correspond to the range of the values used in and obtained with GCMs, suggesting that this analysis can provide a conceptual foundation for analyzing the stability of the interhemispheric THC, and also for the potential of the Atlantic THC to undergo abrupt change.