Stott, Peter A., Jones, Gareth S., Lowe, Jason A., Thorne, Peter, Durman, Chris, Johns, Timothy C. and Thelen, Jean-Claude (2006) Transient Climate Simulations with the HadGEM1 Climate Model: Causes of Past Warming and Future Climate Change. Journal of Climate, 19 (12). pp. 2763-2782. ISSN 0894-8755
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Abstract
The ability of climate models to simulate large-scale temperature changes during the twentieth century
when they include both anthropogenic and natural forcings and their inability to account for warming over
the last 50 yr when they exclude increasing greenhouse gas concentrations has been used as evidence for an
anthropogenic influence on global warming. One criticism of the models used in many of these studies is
that they exclude some forcings of potential importance, notably from fossil fuel black carbon, biomass
smoke, and land use changes. Herein transient simulations with a new model, the Hadley Centre Global
Environmental Model version 1 (HadGEM1), are described, which include these forcings in addition to
other anthropogenic and natural forcings, and a fully interactive treatment of atmospheric sulfur and its
effects on clouds. These new simulations support previous work by showing that there was a significant
anthropogenic influence on near-surface temperature change over the last century. They demonstrate that
black carbon and land use changes are relatively unimportant for explaining global mean near-surface
temperature changes.
The pattern of warming in the troposphere and cooling in the stratosphere that has been observed in
radiosonde data since 1958 can only be reproduced when the model includes anthropogenic forcings.
However, there are some discrepancies between the model simulations and radiosonde data, which are
largest where observational uncertainty is greatest in the Tropics and high latitudes.
Predictions of future warming have also been made using the new model. Twenty-first-century warming
rates, following policy-relevant emissions scenarios, are slightly greater in HadGEM1 than in the Third
Hadley Centre Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere General Circulation Model (HadCM3) as a result of the extra
forcing in HadGEM1. An experiment in which greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic forcings are
stabilized at 2100 levels and held constant until 2200 predicts a committed twenty-second-century warming
of less than 1 K, whose spatial distribution resembles that of warming during the twenty-first century,
implying that the local feedbacks that determine the pattern of warming do not change significantly.
Item Type: | Article |
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Keywords: | Transient Climate Simulations; HadGEM1 Climate Model; Past Warming; Future Climate Change; |
Academic Unit: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, ICARUS |
Item ID: | 6564 |
Identification Number: | 10.1175/JCLI3731.1 |
Depositing User: | Peter Thorne |
Date Deposited: | 11 Nov 2015 14:41 |
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Climate |
Publisher: | American Meteorological Society |
Refereed: | Yes |
Related URLs: | |
URI: | https://mu.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/6564 |
Use Licence: | This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here |
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