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Geophysical Research Letters

Volume 41, Issue 3
Research Letter

The dependence of transient climate sensitivity and radiative feedbacks on the spatial pattern of ocean heat uptake

Brian E. J. Rose

Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, New York, USA

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Kyle C. Armour

Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

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David S. Battisti

Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

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Nicole Feldl

Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, Caltech, Pasadena, California, USA

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Daniel D. B. Koll

Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

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First published: 24 January 2014
https://doi.org/10.1002/2013GL058955
Cited by: 58
Correspondence to:B. Rose,brose@albany.edu

Abstract

The effect of ocean heat uptake (OHU) on transient global warming is studied in a multimodel framework. Simple heat sinks are prescribed in shallow aquaplanet ocean mixed layers underlying atmospheric general circulation models independently and combined with CO2 forcing. Sinks are localized to either tropical or high latitudes, representing distinct modes of OHU found in coupled simulations. Tropical OHU produces modest cooling at all latitudes, offsetting only a fraction of CO2 warming. High‐latitude OHU produces three times more global mean cooling in a strongly polar‐amplified pattern. Global sensitivities in each scenario are set primarily by large differences in local shortwave cloud feedbacks, robust across models. Differences in atmospheric energy transport set the pattern of temperature change. Results imply that global and regional warming rates depend sensitively on regional ocean processes setting the OHU pattern, and that equilibrium climate sensitivity cannot be reliably estimated from transient observations.

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