Abstract
Climate models predict that East Asia (EA) will be substantially warmer than the present despite large inter-model uncertainty. This study investigated the major sources of the climate projections and the inter-model uncertainty. Particularly, we decomposed the differences in surface temperatures between the historical and RCP8.5 runs from 26 CMIP5 into partial surface temperature changes due to individual radiative and non-radiative processes through the climate feedback-response analysis method. Results show that anthropogenic greenhouse forcing and subsequent water vapor feedback processes are primarily responsible for the surface warming over EA. Relatively more rapid warming over the snow/ice-covered area and southern China is due to feedback processes associated with surface albedo and cloud, respectively. The regional warming is, however, compensated by the surface non-radiative (sensible and latent heat) cooling. The inter-model projection uncertainty is substantially large over high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau mainly due to surface albedo feedback. Again, this large uncertainty is partly suppressed by surface non-radiative cooling. Water vapor and cloud feedbacks are the secondary important sources of the projection uncertainty. Moreover, the contributions of greenhouse forcing and atmospheric dynamics to the projection uncertainty are found to be minor.
Highlights
Anthropogenically-induced temperature warming has been documented to bring about increasing risks of extreme weather and climate events globally (Diffenbaugh et al 2015; Yuan et al 2019)
Based on the results of climate feedback-response analysis method (CFRAM) analysis for each model (Fig. 2) and their MME (Fig. 1b), the common feature of the area-mean surface warming over East Asia (EA) and the globe is that the warming can be largely attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gases and positive water vapor feedback, and further amplified by surface albedo feedback and cloud feedback
We have examined the sources of surface warming in the future climate state and warming projection uncertainty (WPU), with a focus on East Asia (EA)
Summary
Anthropogenically-induced temperature warming has been documented to bring about increasing risks of extreme weather and climate events globally (Diffenbaugh et al 2015; Yuan et al 2019). There is a lack of comprehensive studies focusing on the EA region; systematical and quantitative investigations of the sources of surface warming magnitude in the future and the warming projection uncertainty (WPU) over EA are of vital importance. The climate feedback method that we apply is the coupled atmosphere-surface climate feedback-response analysis method (CFRAM; Lu and Cai 2009; Cai and Lu 2009), which characterizes the contributions of individual feedback processes to the projected surface warming by partial surface temperature changes due to individual radiative (e.g., albedo, water vapor, cloud, greenhouse gases, and ozone) and nonradiative (surface heat fluxes and heat transport) feedback processes. The main goal of this paper is to present a process-based feedback analysis to document the main factors responsible for the future warming projections and their uncertainty over East Asia.
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