Breakdown of the Linear Relationship between the Southern Hemisphere Hadley Cell Edge and Jet Latitude Changes in the Last Glacial Maximum

Abstract

AbstractA poleward displacement of the Hadley cell (HC) edge and the eddy-driven jet latitude has been observed in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) during the last few decades. This change is further projected to continue in the future, indicating coherent tropical and extratropical zonal-mean circulation changes from the present climate to a warm climate. Here we show that such a systematic change in the zonal-mean circulation change does not hold in a cold climate. By examining the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), preindustrial (PI), and extended concentration pathway 4.5 (ECP4.5) scenarios archived for phase 3 of the Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project (PMIP3) and phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), it is shown that while the annual-mean SH HC edge systematically shifts poleward from the LGM scenario to the PI scenario and then to the ECP4.5 scenario the annual-mean SH eddy-driven jet latitude does not. All models show a poleward jet shift from the PI scenario to the ECP4.5 scenario, but over one-half of the models exhibit no trend or even an equatorward jet shift from the LGM scenario to the PI scenario. This decoupling between the HC edge and jet latitude changes is most pronounced in SH winter when the Antarctic surface cooling in the LGM scenario is comparable to or larger than the tropical upper-tropospheric cooling. This result indicates that polar amplification could play a crucial role in driving the decoupling of the tropical and midlatitude zonal-mean circulation in the SH in a cold climate.