Clouds and the Atmospheric Circulation Response to Warming

The authors study the effect of clouds on the atmospheric circulation response to CO2 quadrupling in an aquaplanet model with a slab ocean lower boundary. The cloud effect is isolated by locking the clouds to either the control or 4xCO(2) state in the shortwave (SW) or longwave (LW) radiation schemes. In the model, cloud radiative changes explain more than half of the total poleward expansion of the Hadley cells, midlatitude jets, and storm tracks under CO2 quadrupling, even though they cause only one-fourth of the total global-mean surface warming. The effect of clouds on circulation results mainly from the SW cloud radiative changes, which strongly enhance the equator-to-pole temperature gradient at all levels in the troposphere, favoring stronger and poleward-shifted midlatitude eddies. By contrast, quadrupling CO2 while holding the clouds fixed causes strong polar amplification and weakened midlatitude baroclinicity at lower levels, yielding only a small poleward expansion of the circulation. The results show that 1) the atmospheric circulation responds sensitively to cloud-driven changes in meridional and vertical temperature distribution and 2) the spatial structure of cloud feedbacks likely plays a dominant role in the circulation response to greenhouse gas forcing. While the magnitude and spatial structure of the cloud feedback are expected to be highly model dependent, an analysis of 4xCO(2) simulations of CMIP5 models shows that the SW cloud feedback likely forces a poleward expansion of the tropospheric circulation in most climate models.