Abstract
As the global atmosphere warms, water vapor concentrations increase with rising temperatures at a rate of 7%/K. Precipitation change is associated with increased moisture convergence, which can be decomposed into thermodynamic and dynamic contributions. Our previous studies involving Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (CMIP3) projections have suggested that seasonal disparity in changes of global precipitation is primarily associated with the thermodynamic contribution. In this study, a vertically integrated atmospheric water budget analysis using multiple reanalysis datasets demonstrated that dynamic changes played a significant role in seasonal precipitation changes during 1979–2008, especially in the global average and ocean average. The thermodynamic component exhibited almost consistent magnitude in the contribution of seasonal precipitation changes during 1979–2008 in both CMIP5_AMIP models and reanalysis datasets, whereas the dynamic component (related to the tendency of ω and water vapor climatology) made a lower or negative contribution in the CMIP5_AMIP models compared with the reanalysis datasets. Strengthened (weakened) ascending and descending motions in the reanalysis datasets (CMIP5_AMIP models), which were indicative of strengthened (weakened) seasonal mean circulation, tended to increase (reduce) precipitation in the wet season and reduce (increase) precipitation in the dry season during the study period. Vertical profiles of the tendency of moist static energy in the mid-to-upper troposphere suggested a trend toward stability in the CMIP5_AMIP models and one toward instability in the reanalysis datasets. Such disagreement in stability might be related to the different warming tendency in the mid-to-upper troposphere over the tropics.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led the development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. The GPCP combined precipitation data were developed and computed by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center’s Mesoscale Atmospheric Processes Laboratory as a contribution to the GEWEX Global Precipitation Climatology Project. The CMAP data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, United States, from the website at http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/. The MSWEP data were obtained from the website at http://www.gloh2o.org/. GPCC and PREC/L Precipitation data were provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their website at https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/. The CRU precipitation data were obtained from the website at http://badc.nerc.ac.uk. NCEP reanalysis data were provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/). The European Centre provided the ERA-Interim data for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF; http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/). MERRA data were provided by the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/mdisc/). The JRA-25 data was produced and supplied by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI). This study was supported by the grant of MOST 106-2111-M-002-010-MY4 to National Taiwan University.
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Lan, CW., Lo, MH., Chen, CA. et al. The mechanisms behind changes in the seasonality of global precipitation found in reanalysis products and CMIP5 simulations. Clim Dyn 53, 4173–4187 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-04781-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-04781-6