Interhemispheric asymmetry in climate response to a gradual increase of atmospheric CO2

Abstract

THE transient response of a coupled ocean–atmosphere model to an increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been the subject of several studies1–8. The models used in these studies explicitly incorporate the effect of heat transport by ocean currents and are different from the model used by Hansen et al.9. Here we evaluate the climatic influence of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide using a coupled model recently developed at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. The model response exhibits a marked and unexpected interhemispheric asymmetry. In the circumpolar ocean of the Southern Hemisphere, a region of deep vertical mixing, the increase of surface air temperature is very slow. In the Northern Hemisphere of the model, the warming of surface air is faster and increases with latitude, with the exception of the northern North Atlantic, where it is relatively slow because of the weakening of the thermohaline circulation.