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On the relationships between features of the depth–latitude meridional overturning streamfunctions across global coupled climate models

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Abstract

A comparative analysis of the state and response of the latitude–depth meridional overturning streamfunctions in the Climate Model Inter-comparison Project 3 (CMIP3) model set is presented. Simulated overturning strengths of the North Atlantic cell tend to converge towards observational estimates. The models whose simulations of the North Atlantic cell are closest to observational estimates indicate a 29.5 ± 13 % decrease in the maximum intensity of that cell by 2,100. In contrast, agreement with regard to the state and the response to anthropogenic radiative forcing of the global Southern Ocean abyssal cell is poor among the models. A weak relationship between the mean state and the response of the abyssal cell can be used to constrain the reduction of the Southern abyssal cell by 2,100 to 29.3 ± 20.7 %, in rough agreement with the decrease predicted in the Northern cell. The biases across the CMIP3 models in the Northern deep cell and Southern abyssal cell cannot be related dynamically by a buoyancy-based seesaw-like argument. The absence or presence of characteristic relationships between the state and evolution of different features of the overturning streamfunction indicate that the main reasons for across-model spread are how each model deals with subgrid-scale processes and viscosity. This highlights the fact that subgrid-scale parameterizations and resolution improvements should be a priority of model development. These factors are able to explain qualitatively the inter-model differences between the Northern overturning cells of the different models. Across-model differences in the winds over the Southern Ocean are responsible for much of the disparity in the overturning circulation cells of the Southern Ocean.

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Acknowledgments

This material is largely based on work performed while I was a graduate student in Princeton University and was made possible by the generous support of Jorge L. Sarmiento through grants from the US National Science Foundation No. OCE-0327189 and OCE-0727170, the Office of Science (BER), US Department of Energy under Award No. DE-FG02-07ER64467, and BP and Ford Motor Company through the Carbon Mitigation Initiative. Completion and publication were made possible thanks to a post-doctoral James Martin Fellowship from the 21st century Ocean Institute at the Oxford Martin School and the Department of Earth Sciences in the University of Oxford, UK. I acknowledge especially Syukuro Manabe and Kirk Bryan for many inspiring and motivating discussions on various aspects of climate dynamics, climate modelling, model interpretation and model limitations, and J. L. Sarmiento, A. Gnanadesikan, R. M. Key and K. B. Rodgers for providing comments on early versions of this manuscript. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their valuable help.

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    Yves Plancherel

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Plancherel, Y. On the relationships between features of the depth–latitude meridional overturning streamfunctions across global coupled climate models. Clim Dyn 42, 2983–3004 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1984-5

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