Imperial College London

DrPauloCeppi

Faculty of Natural SciencesDepartment of Physics

Senior Lecturer in Climate Science
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 1710p.ceppi Website

 
 
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Location

 

725Huxley BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Publication Type
Year
to

48 results found

Wilson Kemsley S, Nowack P, Ceppi P, 2024, A systematic evaluation of high-cloud controlling factors

<jats:p>Clouds strongly modulate the top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) energy budget. While most evidence indicates that changes in cloud-induced radiative anomalies at the TOA likely amplifies warming, the magnitude of this global cloud feedback remains highly uncertain. &amp;#8220;Cloud Controlling Factor&amp;#8221; (CCF) analysis is an approach that can be used to tackle this uncertainty, deriving relationships between large-scale meteorological drivers and cloud-radiative anomalies which can subsequently be used to constrain cloud feedback. However, the choice of meteorological controlling factors is crucial for a meaningful constraint, and while there is rich literature investigating ideal CCF setups for low-level clouds, there is a distinct lack of analogous research that explicitly targets high clouds.Here, we use ridge regression to systematically evaluate CCFs that specifically target high cloud formation and cessation using historical data. We evaluate the addition of five candidate CCFs to previously established core CCFs within large spatial domains to predict longwave high-cloud radiative anomalies: upper-tropospheric static stability (SUT), sub-cloud moist static energy, convective available potential energy, convective inhibition, and upper-tropospheric wind shear. We identify an optimal configuration including SUT, and show that the spatial distribution of the&amp;#160; SUT &amp;#160;ridge regression coefficients are congruent with the physical drivers of known high-cloud feedbacks. We further deduce that inclusion of SUT into observational constraint frameworks may reduce uncertainty associated with changes in anvil cloud amount as a function of climate change. These results highlight upper-tropospheric static stability as an important CCF for high clouds and longwave cloud feedback, which we begin to explore using modelled data under an abrupt quadrupling of CO2&amp;#160;(abrupt-4xCO2).</jats:p>

Other

Salvi P, Gregory J, Ceppi P, 2024, Assessing the Impact of Surface Energy Inputs on Radiative Feedbacks in Tropical and Extra-tropical Regions: Strength, Evolution, and Timescales

<jats:p>In recent years, radiative feedbacks in the earth system have been strongly tied to the spatial pattern of sea surface temperatures (SSTs). This &amp;#8220;pattern effect&amp;#8221; has been strongly tied to the strength of cloud radiative feedbacks driven by atmospheric stability changes. SST patch Green&amp;#8217;s functions experiments have revealed that the ratio of warming in deep convective tropical regions, versus outside, drives significant changes in atmospheric stability. These Green&amp;#8217;s functions can be used to reconstruct feedbacks from given warming patterns. However, it remains unclear how different warming patterns arise. Different Green&amp;#8217;s functions, prescribing surface heat fluxes in atmosphere-ocean coupled models instead of temperature changes in fixed SST experiments, may answer this question by showing how energy inputs translate into temperature changes.Using a simplistic set of patches of applied surface heat fluxes in CESM2-CAM6 and HadCM3, we find that heat input into the tropics results in strongly negative radiative feedbacks from enhanced warm pool warming. This results in a small climate sensitivity to this tropical forcing. Conversely, heat fluxes input into the extratropics cause significantly less negative feedbacks that result in greater climate sensitivity to extratropical forcing.Furthermore, the response to tropical forcing occurs rapidly, with equilibrium roughly achieved within a few years both in slab ocean and fully coupled models. The response to extratropical forcing, by contrast, induces near-zero feedbacks in the first few years, followed by significantly weaker negative feedbacks than seen under tropical forcing, which leave this simulation far from equilibrium after 150 years in the fully coupled model.These outcomes of forcing, from within the tropics and outside, can be combined to explain the early changes in feedbacks in response to global uniform forcing, or near-un

Other

Kuhlbrodt T, Swaminathan R, Ceppi P, Wilder Tet al., 2024, A glimpse into the future: The 2023 temperature extremes in the North Atlantic in the context of longer-term climate change

<jats:p>In the year 2023, we have seen extraordinary extrema in high sea-surface temperature (SST) in the North Atlantic which are outside the 4-sigma envelope of the 1982-2011 daily timeseries. Here we take a first look at the large-scale, longer-term drivers of these extrema. Earth&amp;#8217;s net global energy imbalance (in the 12 months up to September 2023) amounts to +1.9 W/m2 as part of a remarkably large upward trend, ensuring continuous heating of the ocean. However, the regional radiation budget over the North Atlantic does not show signs of a significant step increase from less negative aerosol forcing since 2020 as was suggested elsewhere. While the temperature in the top 100 m of the global ocean has been rising in all basins since about 1980, specifically the Atlantic basin has continued to further heat up since 2016. Similarly, salinity in the top 100 m of the ocean has increased in recent years specifically in the Atlantic basin. Outside the North Atlantic, around 2015 a substantial negative trend for sea-ice extent in the Southern Ocean has begun, leading to record low sea-ice extent in 2023. We suggest analysing the 2023 temperature extremes in the North Atlantic in the context of these recent global-scale ocean changes. Analysing climate and Earth System model simulations of the future, we find that the extreme SST in the North Atlantic and the extreme in Southern Ocean sea-ice extent in 2023 lie at the fringe of the expected mean climate change for a global surface-air temperature warming level (GWL) of 1.5&amp;#176;C, and closer to the average at a 3.0&amp;#176;C GWL. Understanding the regional and global drivers of these extremes is indispensable for assessing frequency and impacts of similar events in the coming years.</jats:p>

Other

Wilson Kemsley S, Ceppi P, Andersen H, Cermak J, Stier P, Nowack Pet al., 2024, Supplementary material to "A systematic evaluation of high-cloud controlling factors"

Other

Salvi P, Gregory JM, Ceppi P, 2023, Time‐evolving radiative feedbacks in the historical period, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol: 128, ISSN: 2169-8996

We investigate the time-dependence of radiative feedback in the historical period (since the late 19th century), by analyzing experiments using coupled atmosphere–ocean climate models with historical greenhouse gas, anthropogenic aerosol, and natural forcings, each separately. We find that radiative feedback depends on forcing agent, primarily through the effect of cloud on shortwave radiation, because the various forcings cause different changes in global-mean tropospheric stability per degree of global-mean temperature change. The large time-variation of historical feedback driven by observed sea surface temperature change alone, with no forcing agents, is also consistent with tropospheric stability change, and differs from the similarly large and significant historical time-variation of feedback that is simulated in response to all forcing agents together. We show that the latter results from the varying relative sizes of individual forcings. We highlight that volcanic forcing is especially important for understanding the time-variation, because it stimulates particularly strong feedbacks that tend to reduce effective climate sensitivity. We relate this to stability changes due to enhanced surface temperature response in the Indo-Pacific warm pool.

Journal article

Kang SM, Ceppi P, Yu Y, Kang I-Set al., 2023, Recent global climate feedback controlled by Southern Ocean cooling, Nature Geoscience, Vol: 16, Pages: 775-780, ISSN: 1752-0894

The magnitude of global warming is controlled by climate feedbacks associated with various aspects of the climate system, such as clouds. The global climate feedback is the net effect of these feedbacks, and its temporal evolution is thought to depend on the tropical Pacific sea surface temperature pattern. However, current coupled climate models fail to simulate the pattern observed in the Pacific between 1979 and 2013 and its associated anomalously negative feedback. Here we demonstrate a mechanism whereby the Southern Ocean controls the global climate feedback. Using climate model experiments in which Southern Ocean sea surface temperatures are restored to observations, we show that accounting for recent Southern Ocean cooling—which is absent in coupled climate models—halves the bias in the global climate feedback by removing the cloud component bias. This global impact is mediated by a teleconnection to the Southeast Pacific, where remote sea surface temperature anomalies cause a strong stratocumulus cloud feedback. We propose that this Southern Ocean-driven pattern effect is underestimated in most climate models, owing to an overly weak stratocumulus cloud feedback. Addressing this bias may shift climate sensitivities to higher values than currently simulated as the Southern Ocean undergoes accelerated warming in future projections.

Journal article

Kang SM, Yu Y, Deser C, Zhang X, Kang I-S, Lee S-S, Rodgers KB, Ceppi Pet al., 2023, Global impacts of recent Southern Ocean cooling, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol: 120, Pages: 1-10, ISSN: 0027-8424

Since the beginning of the satellite era, Southern Ocean sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have cooled, despite global warming. While observed Southern Ocean cooling has previously been reported to have minimal impact on the tropical Pacific, the efficiency of this teleconnection has recently shown to be mediated by subtropical cloud feedbacks that are highly model-dependent. Here, we conduct a coupled model intercomparison of paired ensemble simulations under historical radiative forcing: one with freely evolving SSTs and the other with Southern Ocean SST anomalies constrained to follow observations. We reveal a global impact of observed Southern Ocean cooling in the model with stronger (and more realistic) cloud feedbacks, including Antarctic sea–ice expansion, southeastern tropical Pacific cooling, northward-shifted Hadley circulation, Aleutian low weakening, and North Pacific warming. Our results therefore suggest that observed Southern Ocean SST decrease might have contributed to cooler conditions in the eastern tropical Pacific in recent decades.

Journal article

Nowack P, Ceppi P, Davis SM, Chiodo G, Ball W, Diallo MA, Hassler B, Jia Y, Keeble J, Joshi Met al., 2023, Response of stratospheric water vapour to warming constrained by satellite observations, Nature Geoscience, Vol: 16, Pages: 577-583, ISSN: 1752-0894

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Future increases in stratospheric water vapour risk amplifying climate change and slowing down the recovery of the ozone layer. However, state-of-the-art climate models strongly disagree on the magnitude of these increases under global warming. Uncertainty primarily arises from the complex processes leading to dehydration of air during its tropical ascent into the stratosphere. Here we derive an observational constraint on this longstanding uncertainty. We use a statistical-learning approach to infer historical co-variations between the atmospheric temperature structure and tropical lower stratospheric water vapour concentrations. For climate models, we demonstrate that these historically constrained relationships are highly predictive of the water vapour response to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. We obtain an observationally constrained range for stratospheric water vapour changes per degree of global warming of 0.31 ± 0.39 ppmv K<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>. Across 61 climate models, we find that a large fraction of future model projections are inconsistent with observational evidence. In particular, frequently projected strong increases (&gt;1 ppmv K<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>) are highly unlikely. Our constraint represents a 50% decrease in the 95th percentile of the climate model uncertainty distribution, which has implications for surface warming, ozone recovery and the tropospheric circulation response under climate change.</jats:p>

Journal article

Williams RG, Ceppi P, Roussenov V, Katavouta A, Meijers AJSet al., 2023, The role of the Southern Ocean in the global climate response to carbon emissions, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol: 381, ISSN: 1364-503X

<jats:p>The effect of the Southern Ocean on global climate change is assessed using Earth system model projections following an idealized 1% annual rise in atmospheric CO<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>. For this scenario, the Southern Ocean plays a significant role in sequestering heat and anthropogenic carbon, accounting for 40% ± 5% of heat uptake and 44% ± 2% of anthropogenic carbon uptake over the global ocean (with the Southern Ocean defined as south of 36°S). This Southern Ocean fraction of global heat uptake is however less than in historical scenarios with marked hemispheric contrasts in radiative forcing. For this idealized scenario, inter-model differences in global and Southern Ocean heat uptake are strongly affected by physical feedbacks, especially cloud feedbacks over the globe and surface albedo feedbacks from sea-ice loss in high latitudes, through the top-of-the-atmosphere energy balance. The ocean carbon response is similar in most models with carbon storage increasing from rising atmospheric CO<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>, but weakly decreasing from climate change with competing ventilation and biological contributions over the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean affects a global climate metric, the transient climate response to emissions, accounting for 28% of its thermal contribution through its physical climate feedbacks and heat uptake, and so affects inter-model differences in meeting warming targets.</jats:p><jats:p>This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Heat and carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean: the state of the art and future priorities'.</jats:p>

Journal article

Cael BB, Bloch-Johnson J, Ceppi P, Fredriksen H-B, Goodwin P, Gregory JM, Smith CJ, Williams RGet al., 2023, Energy budget diagnosis of changing climate feedback, Science Advances, Vol: 9

<jats:p> The climate feedback determines how Earth’s climate responds to anthropogenic forcing. It is thought to have been more negative in recent decades due to a sea surface temperature “pattern effect,” whereby warming is concentrated in the western tropical Pacific, where nonlocal radiative feedbacks are very negative. This phenomenon has however primarily been studied within climate models. We diagnose a pattern effect from historical records as an evolution of the climate feedback over the past five decades. Our analysis assumes a constant rate of change of the climate feedback, which is justified post hoc. We find a decrease in climate feedback by 0.8 ± 0.5 W m <jats:sup>−2</jats:sup> K <jats:sup>−1</jats:sup> over the past 50 years, corresponding to a reduction in climate sensitivity. Earth system models’ climate feedbacks instead increase over this period. Understanding and simulating this historical trend and its future evolution are critical for reliable climate projections. </jats:p>

Journal article

Breul P, Ceppi P, Shepherd TG, 2023, Revisiting the wintertime emergent constraint of the southern hemispheric midlatitude jet response to global warming, Weather and Climate Dynamics, Vol: 4, Pages: 39-47, ISSN: 2698-4016

Most climate models show a poleward shift of the southern hemispheric zonal-mean jet in response to climate change, but the inter-model spread is large. In an attempt to constrain future jet responses, past studies have identified an emergent constraint between the climatological jet latitude and the future jet shift in austral winter. However, we show that the emergent constraint only arises in the zonal mean and not in separate halves of the hemisphere, which questions the physicality of the emergent constraint. We further find that the zonal-mean jet latitude does not represent the latitude of a zonally coherent structure, due to the presence of a double-jet structure in the Pacific region during this season. The zonal asymmetry causes the previously noted large spread in the zonal-mean climatology but not in the response, which underlies the emergent constraint. We therefore argue that the emergent constraint on the zonal-mean jet cannot narrow down the spread in future wind responses, and we propose that emergent constraints on the jet response in austral winter should be based on regional rather than zonal-mean circulation features.

Journal article

Breul P, Ceppi P, Shepherd TG, 2022, Relationship between southern hemispheric jet variability and forced response: the role of the stratosphere, Weather and Climate Dynamics, Vol: 3, Pages: 645-658, ISSN: 2698-4016

Climate models show a wide range of southern hemispheric jet responses to greenhouse gas forcing. One approach to constrain the future jet response is by utilising the fluctuation–dissipation theorem (FDT) which links the forced response to internal variability timescales, with the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) the most dominant mode of variability of the southern hemispheric jet. We show that interannual stratospheric variability approximately doubles the SAM timescale during austral summer in both re-analysis data and models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phases 5 (CMIP5) and 6 (CMIP6). Using a simple barotropic model, we demonstrate how the enhanced SAM timescale subsequently leads to an overestimate of the forced jet response based on the FDT, and we introduce a method to correct for the stratospheric influence. This result helps to resolve a previously identified discrepancy between the seasonality of jet response and the internal variability timescale. However, even after accounting for this influence, the SAM timescale cannot explain inter-model differences in the forced jet shift across CMIP models during austral summer.

Journal article

Salvi P, Ceppi P, Gregory JM, 2022, Interpreting differences in radiative feedbacks from aerosols versus greenhouse gases, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol: 49, Pages: 1-9, ISSN: 0094-8276

Experiments with seven Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 models were used to assess the climate feedback parameter for net historical, historical greenhouse gas (GHG) and anthropogenic aerosol forcings. The net radiative feedback is found to be more amplifying (higher effective climate sensitivity) for aerosol than GHG forcing, and hence also less amplifying for net historical (GHG + aerosol) than GHG only. We demonstrate that this difference is consistent with their different latitudinal distributions. Historical aerosol forcing is most pronounced in northern extratropics, where the boundary layer is decoupled from the free troposphere, so the consequent temperature change is confined to low altitude and causes low-level cloud changes. This is caused by change in stability, which also affects upper-tropospheric clear-sky emission, affecting both shortwave and longwave radiative feedbacks. This response is a feature of extratropical forcing generally, regardless of its sign or hemisphere.

Journal article

Ceppi P, Fueglistaler S, 2021, The El Niño–Southern Oscillation pattern effect, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol: 48, Pages: 1-9, ISSN: 0094-8276

El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability is accompanied by out-of-phase anomalies in the top-of-atmosphere tropical radiation budget, with anomalous downward flux (i.e., net radiative heating) before El Niño and anomalous upward flux thereafter (and vice versa for La Niña). Here, we show that these radiative anomalies result mainly from a sea surface temperature (SST) “pattern effect,” mediated by changes in tropical-mean tropospheric stability. These stability changes are caused by SST anomalies migrating from climatologically cool to warm regions over the ENSO cycle. Our results are suggestive of a two-way coupling between SST variability and radiation, where ENSO-induced radiative changes may in turn feed back onto SST during ENSO.

Journal article

Salvi P, Ceppi P, Gregory JM, 2021, Interpreting the dependence of cloud‐radiative adjustment on forcing agent, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol: 48, ISSN: 0094-8276

Effective radiative forcing includes a contribution by rapid adjustments, that is, changes in temperature, water vapor, and clouds that modify the energy budget. Cloud adjustments in particular have been shown to depend strongly on forcing agent. We perform idealized atmospheric heating experiments to demonstrate a relationship between cloud adjustment and the vertical profile of imposed radiative heating: boundary-layer heating causes a positive cloud adjustment (a net downward radiative anomaly), while free-tropospheric heating yields a negative adjustment. This dependence is dominated by the shortwave effect of changes in low clouds. Much of the variation in cloud adjustment among common forcing agents such as CO2, CH4, solar forcing, and black carbon is explained by the “characteristic altitude” (i.e., the vertical center-of-mass) of their heating profiles, through its effect on tropospheric stability.

Journal article

Ceppi P, Nowack P, 2021, Observational evidence that cloud feedback amplifies global warming, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol: 118, ISSN: 0027-8424

Global warming drives changes in Earth’s cloud cover, which, in turn, may amplify or dampen climate change. This “cloud feedback” is the single most important cause of uncertainty in Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS)—the equilibrium global warming following a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Using data from Earth observations and climate model simulations, we here develop a statistical learning analysis of how clouds respond to changes in the environment. We show that global cloud feedback is dominated by the sensitivity of clouds to surface temperature and tropospheric stability. Considering changes in just these two factors, we are able to constrain global cloud feedback to 0.43 ± 0.35 W⋅m<jats:sup>−2</jats:sup>⋅K<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup> (90% confidence), implying a robustly amplifying effect of clouds on global warming and only a 0.5% chance of ECS below 2 K. We thus anticipate that our approach will enable tighter constraints on climate change projections, including its manifold socioeconomic and ecological impacts.

Journal article

Chen Y-J, Hwang Y-T, Ceppi P, 2021, The impacts of cloud-radiative changes on poleward atmospheric and oceanic energy transport in a warmer climate, Journal of Climate, Vol: 34, Pages: 7857-7874, ISSN: 0894-8755

Based on theory and climate model experiments, previous studies suggest most of the uncertainties in projected future changes in meridional energy transport and zonal mean surface temperature can be attributed to cloud feedback. To investigate how radiative and dynamical adjustments modify the influence of cloud-radiative changes on energy transport, this study applies a cloud-locking technique in a fully-coupled climate model, CESM. Under global warming, the impacts of cloud-radiative changes on the meridional energy transport are asymmetric in the two hemispheres. In the Northern Hemisphere, the cloud-radiative changes have little impact on energy transport, because 89% of the cloud-induced heating is balanced locally by increasing outgoing longwave radiation. In the Southern Hemisphere, on the other hand, cloud-induced dynamical changes in the atmosphere and the ocean cause enhanced poleward energy transport, accounting for most of the increase in energy transport under warming. Our experiments highlight that the local longwave radiation adjustment induced by temperature variation can partially offset the impacts of cloud-radiative changes on energy transport, making the estimated impacts smaller than those obtained from directly integrating cloud-radiative changes in previous studies. It is also demonstrated that the cloud-radiative impacts on temperature and energy transport can be significantly modulated by the oceanic circulation, suggesting the necessity of considering atmospheric-oceanic coupling when estimating the impacts of cloud-radiative changes on the climate system.

Journal article

Voigt A, Albern N, Ceppi P, Grise K, Li Y, Medeiros Bet al., 2021, Clouds, radiation, and atmospheric circulation in the present-day climate and under climate change, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: WIREs Climate Change, Vol: 12, Pages: 1-22, ISSN: 1757-7780

By interacting with radiation, clouds modulate the flow of energy through the Earth system, the circulation of the atmosphere, and regional climate. We review the impact of cloud‐radiation interactions for the atmospheric circulation in the present‐day climate, its internal variability and its response to climate change. After summarizing cloud‐controlling factors and cloud‐radiative effects, we clarify the scope and limits of the Clouds On‐Off Klimate Model Intercomparison Experiment (COOKIE) and cloud‐locking modeling methods. COOKIE showed that the presence of cloud‐radiative effects shapes the circulation in the present‐day climate in many important ways, including the width of the tropical rain belts and the position of the extratropical storm tracks. Cloud locking, in contrast, identified how clouds affect internal variability and the circulation response to global warming. This includes strong, but model‐dependent, shortwave and longwave cloud impacts on the El‐Nino Southern Oscillation, and the finding that most of the poleward circulation expansion in response to global warming can be attributed to radiative changes in clouds. We highlight the circulation impact of shortwave changes from low‐level clouds and longwave changes from rising high‐level clouds, and the contribution of these cloud changes to model differences in the circulation response to global warming. The review in particular draws attention to the role of cloud‐radiative heating within the atmosphere. We close by raising some open questions which, among others, concern the need for studying the cloud impact on regional scales and opportunities created by the next generation of global storm‐resolving models.

Journal article

Zappa G, Ceppi P, Shepherd TG, 2021, Eurasian cooling in response to Arctic sea-ice loss is not proved by maximum covariance analysis, Nature Climate Change, Vol: 11, Pages: 106-108, ISSN: 1758-678X

Journal article

Williams RG, Ceppi P, Katavouta A, 2020, Controls of the transient climate response to emissions by physical feedbacks, heat uptake and carbon cycling, Environmental Research Letters, Vol: 15, ISSN: 1748-9326

The surface warming response to carbon emissions is diagnosed using a suite of Earth system models, 9 CMIP6 and 7 CMIP5, following an annual 1\% rise in atmospheric CO$_2$ over 140 years. This surface warming response defines a climate metric, the Transient Climate Response to cumulative carbon Emissions (TCRE), which is important in estimating how much carbon may be emitted to avoid dangerous climate. The processes controlling these intermodel differences in the TCRE are revealed by defining the TCRE in terms of a product of three dependences: the surface warming dependence on radiative forcing (including the effects of physical climate feedbacks and planetary heat uptake), the radiative forcing dependence on changes in atmospheric carbon and the airborne fraction. Intermodel differences in the TCRE are mainly controlled by the thermal response involving the surface warming dependence on radiative forcing, which arise through large differences in physical climate feedbacks that are only partly compensated by smaller differences in ocean heat uptake. The other contributions to the TCRE from the radiative forcing and carbon responses are of comparable importance to the contribution from the thermal response on timescales of 50 years and longer for our subset of CMIP5 models and 100 years and longer for our subset of CMIP6 models. Hence, providing tighter constraints on how much carbon may be emitted based on the TCRE requires providing tighter bounds for estimates of the physical climate feedbacks, particularly from clouds, as well as to a lesser extent for the other contributions from the rate of ocean heat uptake, and the terrestrial and ocean cycling of carbon.

Journal article

Curtis PE, Ceppi P, Zappa G, 2020, Role of the mean state for the Southern Hemispheric Jet Stream response to CO₂ forcing in CMIP6 models, Environmental Research Letters, Vol: 15, Pages: 1-7, ISSN: 1748-9326

Global climate models indicate that the Southern Hemispheric (SH) jet stream shifts poleward in response to CO2 forcing, but the magnitude of this shift remains highly uncertain. Here we analyse the SH jet stream response to 4×CO2 forcing in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) simulations, and find a substantially muted jet shift during winter compared with CMIP5. We suggest this muted response results from a more poleward mean jet position, consistent with a strongly reduced bias in jet position relative to the reanalysis during 1980--2004. The improved mean jet position cannot be explained by changes in the simulated sea surface temperatures. Instead, we find indications that increased horizontal grid resolution in CMIP6 relative to CMIP5 has contributed to the higher mean jet latitude, and thus to the reduced jet shift under CO2 forcing. These results imply that CMIP6 models can provide more realistic projections of SH climate change.

Journal article

Zappa G, Ceppi P, Shepherd TG, 2020, Time-evolving sea-surface warming patterns modulate the climate change response of subtropical precipitation over land, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol: 117, Pages: 4539-4545, ISSN: 0027-8424

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions affect precipitation worldwide. The response is commonly described by two timescales linked to different processes: a rapid adjustment to radiative forcing, followed by a slower response to surface warming. However, additional timescales exist in the surface-warming response, tied to the time evolution of the sea-surface-temperature (SST) response. Here, we show that in climate model projections, the rapid adjustment and surface mean warming are insufficient to explain the time evolution of the hydro-climate response in three key Mediterranean-like areas—namely, California, Chile, and the Mediterranean. The time evolution of those responses critically depends on distinct shifts in the regional atmospheric circulation associated with the existence of distinct fast and slow SST warming patterns. As a result, Mediterranean and Chilean drying are in quasiequilibrium with GHG concentrations, meaning that the drying will not continue after GHG concentrations are stabilized, whereas California wetting will largely emerge only after GHG concentrations are stabilized. The rapid adjustment contributes to a reduction in precipitation, but has a limited impact on the balance between precipitation and evaporation. In these Mediterranean-like regions, future hydro-climate–related impacts will be substantially modulated by the time evolution of the pattern of SST warming that is realized in the real world.

Journal article

Ceppi P, Gregory J, 2020, Climate sensitivity: What is it, and why is it important?, Climate sensitivity: What is it, and why is it important?, Publisher: The Grantham Institute, 11

Climate sensitivity is a fundamental measure of global climate change. This briefing paper explains how climate sensitivity is estimated from different lines of evidence – modelling, observations, and palaeoclimate records – and why its exact value remains uncertain.

Report

Zelinka MD, Myers TA, McCoy DT, PoChedley S, Caldwell PM, Ceppi P, Klein SA, Taylor KEet al., 2020, Causes of higher climate sensitivity in CMIP6 models, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol: 47, ISSN: 0094-8276

Equilibrium climate sensitivity, the global surface temperature response to CO urn:x-wiley:grl:media:grl60047:grl60047-math-0001 doubling, has been persistently uncertain. Recent consensus places it likely within 1.5–4.5 K. Global climate models (GCMs), which attempt to represent all relevant physical processes, provide the most direct means of estimating climate sensitivity via CO urn:x-wiley:grl:media:grl60047:grl60047-math-0002 quadrupling experiments. Here we show that the closely related effective climate sensitivity has increased substantially in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6), with values spanning 1.8–5.6 K across 27 GCMs and exceeding 4.5 K in 10 of them. This (statistically insignificant) increase is primarily due to stronger positive cloud feedbacks from decreasing extratropical low cloud coverage and albedo. Both of these are tied to the physical representation of clouds which in CMIP6 models lead to weaker responses of extratropical low cloud cover and water content to unforced variations in surface temperature. Establishing the plausibility of these higher sensitivity models is imperative given their implied societal ramifications.

Journal article

Lin Y, Hwang Y, Ceppi P, Gregory Jet al., 2019, Uncertainty in the evolution of climate feedback traced to the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol: 46, Pages: 12331-12339, ISSN: 0094-8276

In most coupled climate models, effective climate sensitivity increases for a few decades following an abrupt CO2 increase. The change in the climate feedback parameter between the first 20 years and the subsequent 130 years is highly model dependent. In this study, we suggest that the intermodel spread of changes in climate feedback can be partially traced to the evolution of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Models with stronger Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation recovery tend to project more amplified warming in the Northern Hemisphere a few decades after a quadrupling of CO2. Tropospheric stability then decreases as the Northern Hemisphere gets warmer, which leads to an increase in both the lapse‐rate and shortwave cloud feedbacks. Our results suggest that constraining future ocean circulation changes will be necessary for accurate climate sensitivity projections.

Journal article

Ceppi P, Shepherd TG, 2019, Contributions of climate feedbacks to changes in atmospheric circulation, Journal of Climate, Vol: 30, Pages: 9097-9118, ISSN: 0894-8755

The projected response of the atmospheric circulation to the radiative changes induced by CO2 forcing and climate feedbacks is currently uncertain. In this modeling study, the impact of CO2-induced climate feedbacks on changes in jet latitude and speed is assessed by imposing surface albedo, cloud, and water vapor feedbacks as if they were forcings in two climate models, CAM4 and ECHAM6. The jet response to radiative feedbacks can be broadly interpreted through changes in midlatitude baroclinicity. Clouds enhance baroclinicity, favoring a strengthened, poleward-shifted jet; this is mitigated by surface albedo changes, which have the opposite effect on baroclinicity and the jet, while water vapor has opposing effects on upper- and lower-level baroclinicity with little net impact on the jet. Large differences between the CAM4 and ECHAM6 responses illustrate how model uncertainty in radiative feedbacks causes a large spread in the baroclinicity response to CO2 forcing. Across the CMIP5 models, differences in shortwave feedbacks by clouds and albedo are a dominant contribution to this spread. Forcing CAM4 with shortwave cloud and albedo feedbacks from a representative set of CMIP5 models yields a wide range of jet responses that strongly correlate with the meridional gradient of the anomalous shortwave heating and the associated baroclinicity response. Differences in shortwave feedbacks statistically explain about 50% of the intermodel spread in CMIP5 jet shifts for the set of models used, demonstrating the importance of constraining radiative feedbacks for accurate projections of circulation changes.

Journal article

Gregory JM, Andrews T, Ceppi P, Mauritsen T, Webb MJet al., 2019, How accurately can the climate sensitivity to CO₂ be estimated from historical climate change?, Climate Dynamics, Vol: 54, Pages: 129-157, ISSN: 0930-7575

The equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS, in K) to CO2 doubling is a large source of uncertainty in projections of future anthropogenic climate change. Estimates of ECS made from non-equilibrium states or in response to radiative forcings other than 2×CO2 are called “effective climate sensitivity” (EffCS, in K). Taking a “perfect-model” approach, using coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model (AOGCM) experiments, we evaluate the accuracy with which CO2 EffCS can be estimated from climate change in the “historical” period (since about 1860). We find that (1) for statistical reasons, unforced variability makes the estimate of historical EffCS both uncertain and biased; it is overestimated by about 10% if the energy balance is applied to the entire historical period, 20% for 30-year periods, and larger factors for interannual variability, (2) systematic uncertainty in historical radiative forcing translates into an uncertainty of ±30to45% (standard deviation) in historical EffCS, (3) the response to the changing relative importance of the forcing agents, principally CO2 and volcanic aerosol, causes historical EffCS to vary over multidecadal timescales by a factor of two. In recent decades it reached its maximum in the AOGCM historical experiment (similar to the multimodel-mean CO2 EffCS of 3.6 K from idealised experiments), but its minimum in the real world (1.6 K for an observational estimate for 1985–2011, similar to the multimodel-mean value for volcanic forcing). The real-world variations mean that historical EffCS underestimates CO2 EffCS by 30% when considering the entire historical period. The difference for recent decades implies that either unforced variability or the response to volcanic forcing causes a much stronger regional pattern of sea surface temperature change in the real world than in AOGCMs. We speculate that this could be explained by a deficiency in simulated coupled atmosphere

Journal article

Ceppi P, Gregory JM, 2019, A refined model for the Earth’s global energy balance, Climate Dynamics, Vol: 53, Pages: 4781-4797, ISSN: 0930-7575

A commonly-used model of the global radiative budget assumes that the radiative response to forcing, R, is proportional to global surface air temperature T, R= λT. Previous studies have highlighted two unresolved issues with this model: first, the feedback parameter λ depends on the forcing agent; second, λ varies with time. Here, we investigate the factors controlling R in two atmosphere–slab ocean climate models subjected to a wide range of abrupt climate forcings. It is found that R scales not only with T, but also with the large-scale tropospheric stability S (defined here as the estimated inversion strength area-averaged over ocean regions equatorward of 50∘). Positive S promotes negative R, mainly through shortwave cloud and lapse-rate changes. A refined model of the global energy balance is proposed that accounts for both temperature and stability effects. This refined model quantitatively explains (1) the dependence of climate feedbacks on forcing agent (or equivalently, differences in forcing efficacy), and (2) the time evolution of feedbacks in coupled climate model experiments. Furthermore, a similar relationship between R and S is found in observations compared with models, lending confidence that the refined energy balance model is applicable to the real world.

Journal article

Ceppi P, Shepherd TG, 2019, The role of the stratospheric polar vortex for the austral jet response to greenhouse gas forcing, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol: 46, Pages: 6972-6979, ISSN: 0094-8276

Future shifts of the austral midlatitude jet are subject to large uncertainties in climate model projections. Here we show that, in addition to other previously identified sources of intermodel uncertainty, changes in the timing of the stratospheric polar vortex breakdown modulate the austral jet response to greenhouse gas forcing during summertime (December–February). The relationship is such that a larger delay in vortex breakdown favors a more poleward jet shift, with an estimated 0.7–0.8° increase in jet shift per 10-day delay in vortex breakdown. The causality of the link between the timing of the vortex breakdown and the tropospheric jet response is demonstrated through climate modeling experiments with imposed changes in the seasonality of the stratospheric polar vortex. The vortex response is estimated to account for about 30% of the intermodel variance in the shift of the summertime austral jet and about 45% of the mean jet shift.

Journal article

Thompson DWJ, Ceppi P, Li Y, 2019, A robust constraint on the temperature and height of the extratropical tropopause, Journal of Climate, Vol: 32, Pages: 273-287, ISSN: 0894-8755

In a recent study, the authors hypothesize that the Clausius–Clapeyron relation provides a strong constraint on the temperature of the extratropical tropopause and hence the depth of mixing by extratropical eddies. The hypothesis is a generalization of the fixed-anvil temperature hypothesis to the global atmospheric circulation. It posits that the depth of robust mixing by extratropical eddies is limited by radiative cooling by water vapor—and hence saturation vapor pressures—in areas of sinking motion. The hypothesis implies that 1) radiative cooling by water vapor constrains the vertical structure and amplitude of extratropical dynamics and 2) the extratropical tropopause should remain at roughly the same temperature and lift under global warming. Here the authors test the hypothesis in numerical simulations run on an aquaplanet general circulation model (GCM) and a coupled atmosphere–ocean GCM (AOGCM). The extratropical cloud-top height, wave driving, and lapse-rate tropopause all shift upward but remain at roughly the same temperature when the aquaplanet GCM is forced by uniform surface warming of +4 K and when the AOGCM is forced by RCP8.5 scenario emissions. “Locking” simulations run on the aquaplanet GCM further reveal that 1) holding the water vapor concentrations input into the radiation code fixed while increasing surface temperatures strongly constrains the rise in the extratropical tropopause, whereas 2) increasing the water vapor concentrations input into the radiation code while holding surface temperatures fixed leads to robust rises in the extratropical tropopause. Together, the results suggest that roughly invariant extratropical tropopause temperatures constitutes an additional “robust response” of the climate system to global warming.

Journal article

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