Twentieth‐century temperature and precipitation trends in ensemble climate simulations including natural and anthropogenic forcing

Abstract

We present results from a series of ensemble integrations of a global coupled atmosphere‐ocean model for the period 1865–1997. Each ensemble consists of three integrations initialized from different points in a long‐running GFDL R30 coupled model control simulation. The first ensemble includes time‐varying forcing from greenhouse gases only. In the remaining three ensembles, forcings from anthropogenic sulfate aerosols, solar variability, and volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere are added progressively, such that the fourth ensemble uses all four of these forcings. The effects of anthropogenic sulfate aerosols are represented by changes in surface albedo, and the effects of volcanic aerosols are represented by latitude‐dependent perturbations in incident solar radiation. Comparisons with observations reveal that the addition of the natural forcings (solar and volcanic) improves the simulation of global multidecadal trends in temperature, precipitation, and ocean heat content. Solar and volcanic forcings are important contributors to early twentieth century warming. Volcanic forcing reduces the warming simulated for the late twentieth century. Interdecadal variations in global mean surface air temperature from the ensemble of experiments with all four forcings are very similar to observed variations during most of the twentieth century. The improved agreement of simulated and observed temperature trends when natural climate forcings are included supports the climatic importance of variations in radiative forcing during the twentieth century.