Climate Change Predictions with a Fully Resolved Stratosphere
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Reading
Department Name: Meteorology
Abstract
Climate model simulations for the next assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are currently being prepared by climate modelling centres around the world. In this joint project with the Met Office, fully coupled atmosphere-ocean model simulations will be performed and analysed using a 'high-top' version of the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model that extends to 85km and therefore fully resolves processes in the stratosphere. Simulations of the past (1860-present) and into the future (to 2100) will be carried out. The project will examine the climate change signals predicted by the fully coupled ocean-troposphere-stratosphere model and investigate the stratospheric influence on surface climate. These aims will be achieved by careful analysis of the model runs, together with additional experiments to isolate processes, test mechanisms and improve statistical significance. Particular emphasis will be placed on (a) regional and seasonal patterns of surface change, especially the North Atlantic Oscillation and impacts over Europe, and (b) detection and attribution studies, exploiting the well-known tropospheric warming / stratospheric cooling signature of anthropogenic influence. Comparisons will be carried out with observations, with corresponding low-top model runs that do not fully resolve the stratosphere and with runs from high-top models carried out by other international climate modelling groups.
Publications
Mitchell D
(2014)
Signatures of naturally induced variability in the atmosphere using multiple reanalysis datasets
in Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society
Richter J
(2011)
Influence of the quasi-biennial oscillation and El Niño-Southern Oscillation on the frequency of sudden stratospheric warmings
in Journal of Geophysical Research
Scaife A
(2013)
A mechanism for lagged North Atlantic climate response to solar variability
in Geophysical Research Letters
Seviour W
(2013)
A practical method to identify displaced and split stratospheric polar vortex events
in Geophysical Research Letters
Watson P
(2014)
How Does the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation Affect the Stratospheric Polar Vortex?
in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
Watson P
(2014)
The stratospheric wintertime response to applied extratropical torques and its relationship with the annular mode
in Climate Dynamics
Wilcox L
(2012)
Trends in Austral jet position in ensembles of high- and low-top CMIP5 models
in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres