Abstract
This study aims to understand the mechanisms which cause an overall reduction of SH extratropical cyclone activity with a slight increase in the high latitudes in a warmer climate simulated in general circulation models (GCMs) with increasing CO2. For this purpose, we conducted idealized model experiments by forcing warm temperature anomalies to the areas where climate change models exhibit local maximum warming—the tropics in the upper troposphere and the polar regions in the lower troposphere—simultaneously and separately. The Melbourne University atmospheric GCM (R21) coupled with prescribed SST was utilized for the experiments. Our results demonstrate that the reduction of SH extratropical cyclone frequency and depth in the midlatitudes but the slight increase in the high latitudes suggested in climate change models result essentially from the tropical upper tropospheric warming. With this tropical warming, the enhanced static stability which decreases baroclinicity in the low and midlatitudes turns out to be a major contributor to the decrease of cyclone activity equatorward of 45°S whereas the increased meridional temperature gradient in the high latitudes seems an important mechanism for the increase of cyclone activity over 50°–60°S.
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Acknowledgments
Parts of this research was made possible by funding from the Australian Research Council, the Antarctic Science Advisory Committee and the David Lachlan Hay Memorial Fund at The University of Melbourne. The authors are grateful for the input from Xingren Wu and the Antarctic CRC and for the help with running the MUGCM experiments from Richard Wardle. Neville Nicholls, Alexandre Pezza, Harun Rashid and two anonymous reviewers are thanked for giving useful comments on the text. We appreciate the help with the IPCC figure from Julie Arblaster and programing assistance from Kevin Keay.
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Lim, EP., Simmonds, I. Effect of tropospheric temperature change on the zonal mean circulation and SH winter extratropical cyclones. Clim Dyn 33, 19–32 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0444-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0444-0