Land-sea warming contrast: the role of the horizontal energy transport

Abstract

In this study we investigate the role of the mechanisms at play in the magnitude of the land-sea warming contrast and its intermodel spread in the fifth coupled models intercomparison project (CMIP5) simulations. In this aim, an energy-balance model (EBM), with one box representing the land area and two other boxes the near-surface and the deep ocean, is developed. In particular, a simple parameterization of the horizontal energy transport (HET) change between these two regions is proposed. The EBM is shown to capture the variation of the land and the ocean temperature responses and of the land-sea warming ratio in different idealized climate change experiments. By using this framework, we first show that the land-sea warming contrast is explained by the asymmetry in the strength of the HET between the land and ocean and not by land-sea differences in radiative feedbacks. Then we use a method of analysis of variance to infer the contributors to the intermodel spread in the land-sea warming ratio of climate models participating to CMIP5. The main contributor is found to be the HET with a contribution of about 70 %. Finally, our results suggest that the asymmetric character of the HET dependency to the land and the ocean temperature responses may be primarily explained by the land-sea differences in surface specific humidity change for a given temperature change.