The Effects of Ocean Heat Uptake on Transient Climate Sensitivity

Abstract

Transient climate sensitivity tends to increase on multiple timescales in climate models subject to an abrupt CO2 increase. The interdependence of radiative and ocean heat uptake processes governing this increase are reviewed. Heat uptake tends to be spatially localized to the subpolar oceans, and this pattern emerges rapidly from an initially uniform distribution. Global climatic impact of heat uptake is studied through the lens of the efficacy concept and a linear systems perspective in which responses to individual climate forcing agents are additive. Heat uptake can be treated as a slowly varying forcing on the atmosphere and surface, whose efficacy is strongly determined by its geographical pattern. An illustrative linear model driven by simple prescribed uptake patterns demonstrates the emergence of increasing climate sensitivity as a consequence of the slow decay of high-efficacy subpolar heat uptake. Evidence is reviewed for the key role of shortwave cloud feedbacks in setting the high efficacy of ocean heat uptake and thus in increasing climate sensitivity. A causal physical mechanism is proposed, linking subpolar heat uptake to a global-scale increase in lower-tropospheric stability. It is shown that the rate of increase in estimated inversion strength systematically slows as heat uptake decays. Variations in heat uptake should therefore manifest themselves as differences in low cloud feedbacks.