Sensitivity of the southern annular mode to greenhouse gas emission scenarios

Abstract

The leading mode of southern hemisphere (SH) climatic variability, the southern annular mode (SAM), has recently seen a shift towards its positive phase due to stratospheric ozone depletion and increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. Here we examine how sensitive the SAM (defined as the leading empirical orthogonal function of SH sea level pressure anomalies) is to future GHG concentrations. We determine its likely evolution for three intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) special report on emission scenarios (SRES) for austral summer and winter, using a multi-model ensemble of IPCC fourth assessment report models which resolve stratospheric ozone recovery. During the period of summer ozone recovery (2000–2050), the SAM index exhibits weakly negative, statistically insignificant trends due to stratospheric ozone recovery which offsets the positive forcing imposed by increasing GHG concentrations. Thereafter, positive SAM index trends occur with magnitudes that show sensitivity to the SRES scenario utilised, and thus future GHG emissions. Trends are determined to be strongest for SRES A2, followed by A1B and B1, respectively. The winter SAM maintains a similar dependency upon GHG as summer, but over the entire twenty-first century and to a greater extent. We also examine the influence of ozone recovery by comparing results to models that exclude stratospheric ozone recovery. Projections are shown to be statistically different from the aforementioned results, highlighting the importance of ozone recovery in governing SAM-evolution. We therefore demonstrate that the future SAM will depend both upon GHG emissions and stratospheric ozone recovery.