Abstract
Globally, latent heating associated with a change in precipitation is balanced by changes to atmospheric radiative cooling and sensible heat fluxes. Both components can be altered by climate forcing mechanisms and through climate feedbacks, but the impacts of climate forcing and feedbacks on sensible heat fluxes have received much less attention. Here we show, using a range of climate modelling results, that changes in sensible heat are the dominant contributor to the present global-mean precipitation change since preindustrial time, because the radiative impact of forcings and feedbacks approximately compensate. The model results show a dissimilar influence on sensible heat and precipitation from various drivers of climate change. Due to its strong atmospheric absorption, black carbon is found to influence the sensible heat very differently compared to other aerosols and greenhouse gases. Our results indicate that this is likely caused by differences in the impact on the lower tropospheric stability.
Highlights
Latent heating associated with a change in precipitation is balanced by changes to atmospheric radiative cooling and sensible heat fluxes
Andrews et al.[21] showed that the precipitation change occurring on a fast timescale scales strongly with changes in atmospheric radiative cooling due to the direct effect of the forcing mechanism, while the slow, surface temperature driven precipitation change scales with top-of-atmosphere radiative forcing
This has recently been supported by a multi-model intercomparison (PDRMIP) study[20]
Summary
Latent heating associated with a change in precipitation is balanced by changes to atmospheric radiative cooling and sensible heat fluxes. The transfer of heat from the surface to the atmosphere without any phase change, is dependent on the temperature difference between the surface and the overlying air, on turbulence and on convection It is currently among the most uncertain factors in the present-day global energy budget[14], and its response to climate change is even less well understood. We combine climate model results from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5)[18] and the Precipitation Driver and Response Model Intercomparison Project (PDRMIP)[19,20] to investigate the role of changes in radiative cooling and sensible heat that are associated with historical and future precipitation changes (see further description in the Methods section). In PDRMIP, dedicated simulations to understand change occurring on fast and slow timescales have been performed (Methods section)
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