Southern Hemisphere subtropical drying as a transient response to warming

JMK Sniderman; JR Brown; JD Woodhead; AD King; NP Gillett; KB Tokarska; K Lorbacher; J Hellstrom; RN Drysdale; M Meinshausen

Journal article

Southern Hemisphere subtropical drying as a transient response to warming

JMK Sniderman, JR Brown, JD Woodhead, AD King, NP Gillett, KB Tokarska, K Lorbacher, J Hellstrom, RN Drysdale, M Meinshausen

Nature Climate Change | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2019

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0397-9

Abstract

Climate projections1–3 and observations over recent decades4,5 indicate that precipitation in subtropical latitudes declines in response to anthropogenic warming, with significant implications for food production and population sustainability. However, this conclusion is derived from emissions scenarios with rapidly increasing radiative forcing to the year 21001,2, which may represent very different conditions from both past and future ‘equilibrium’ warmer climates. Here, we examine multi-century future climate simulations and show that in the Southern Hemisphere subtropical drying ceases soon after global temperature stabilizes. Our results suggest that twenty-first century Southern Hemisph..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Kale Sniderman Author

Josephine Brown Author

Jon Woodhead Author

Andrew King Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

We thank P. Hope, L. Ashcroft, B. Timbal and R. Colman for comments on versions of the manuscript, and P. Whetton for discussions about this study. This research programme was supported by Australian Research Council grants DP0985214 and FL160100028 (to J.D.W.), DP130101829 (to J.D.W. and R.N.D.), DE120102530 (to J.M.K.S.), FT130100801 (to J.H.) and DE180100638 (to A.D.K.). We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP5, and we thank the climate modelling groups (listed in Supplementary Table 1) for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP5, the US Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led the development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.