Cao, Long and Bala, Govindasamy and Caldeira, Ken (2011) Why is there a short-term increase in global precipitation in response to diminished CO2 forcing? In: Geophysical Research Letters, 38 .
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Recently, it was found that a reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentration leads to a temporary increase in global precipitation. We use the Hadley Center coupled atmosphere-ocean model, HadCM3L, to demonstrate that this precipitation increase is a consequence of precipitation sensitivity to changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations through fast tropospheric adjustment processes. Slow ocean cooling explains the longer-term decrease in precipitation. Increased CO2 tends to suppress evaporation/precipitation whereas increased temperatures tend to increase evaporation/precipitation. When the enhanced CO2 forcing is removed, global precipitation increases temporarily, but this increase is not observed when a similar negative radiative forcing is applied as a reduction of solar intensity. Therefore, transient precipitation increase following a reduction in CO2-radiative forcing is a consequence of the specific character of CO2 forcing and is not a general feature associated with decreases in radiative forcing. Citation: Cao, L., G. Bala, and K. Caldeira (2011), Why is there a short-term increase in global precipitation in response to diminished CO2 forcing?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L06703, doi:10.1029/2011GL046713.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Geophysical Research Letters |
| Publisher: | American Geophysical Union |
| Additional Information: | Copyright of this article belongs to American Geophysical Union. |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Mechanical Sciences > Divecha Centre for Climate Change Division of Mechanical Sciences > Centre for Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Apr 2011 06:20 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Apr 2011 06:20 |
| URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/36749 |
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