FN Archimer Export Format
PT J
TI Western and Central tropical Pacific rainfall response to climate change: Sensitivity to projected Sea Surface Temperature patterns
BT 
AF Dutheil, C
   LENGAIGNE, Matthieu
   Vialard, J
   JULLIEN, Swen
   Menkes, C
AS 1:1;2:2;3:3;4:5;5:4;
FF 1:;2:;3:;4:PDG-ODE-LOPS-SIAM;5:;
C1 Department of Physical Oceanography and Instrumentation, Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, Rostock, Germany
   MARBEC, University of Montpellier, CNRS, IFREMER, IRD, Sète, France
   LOCEAN-IPSL, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, IRD, MNHN, Paris, France
   ENTROPIE , IRD, Univ. de la Nouvelle Calédonie, Univ. de la Réunion, CNRS, Ifremer, Nouméa, Nouvelle-Calédonie
   Ifremer, University of Brest, CNRS, IRD, Laboratoire d’Océanographie Physique et Spatiale (LOPS), IUEM, Plouzané, France
C2 LEIBNIZ INST BALT SEA RES (IOW), GERMANY
   IRD, FRANCE
   UNIV SORBONNE, FRANCE
   IRD, FRANCE
   IFREMER, FRANCE
SI BREST
SE PDG-ODE-LOPS-SIAM
UM LOPS
   MARBEC
   ENTROPIE
IN WOS Ifremer UMR
   WOS Cotutelle UMR
   copubli-france
   copubli-p187
   copubli-europe
   copubli-univ-france
IF 4.9
TC 2
UR https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00777/88909/94515.pdf
LA English
DT Article
DE ;Precipitation;Sea surface temperature;Climate change;Hydrologic cycle;Climate models;Regional models
AB Rainfall projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) models are strongly tied to projected Sea Surface Temperature (SST) spatial patterns through the “warmer-gets-wetter” mechanism. While these models consistently project an enhanced equatorial warming they however indicate much more uncertain changes in zonal SST gradients. That translates into large uncertainties on rainfall projections. Here, we force an atmospheric model with synthetic SSTs whose zonal SST gradient changes span the range of CMIP5 uncertainties in the presence and in the absence of the robust equatorially enhanced warming. Our results confirm that projected rainfall changes are dominated by the effect of circulation changes, which are tied to SST through the “warmer-gets-wetter” mechanism. We show that SPCZ rainfall changes are entirely driven by the uncertain zonal SST gradient changes. The western equatorial Pacific rainfall increase is largely controlled by the robust enhanced equatorial warming for modest zonal SST gradient changes. However, for larger values, the effect of the zonal SST gradient change on rainfall projections becomes dominant due to nonlinear interactions with the enhanced equatorial warming. Overall, our study demonstrates that uncertainties in the zonal SST gradient changes strongly contribute to uncertainties in rainfall projections over both the South Pacific Convergence Zone and western equatorial Pacific. It is thus critical to reduce these uncertainties to produce more robust precipitation estimates. 
PY 2022
PD SEP
SO Journal Of Climate
SN 0894-8755
PU American Meteorological Society
VL 35
IS 18
UT 000862950100022
BP 6175
EP 6189
DI 10.1175/JCLI-D-22-0062.1
ID 88909
ER

EF