Journal article
Nonlinear feedbacks associated with the indian ocean dipole and their response to global warming in the GFDL-ESM2M coupled climate model
B Ng, W Cai, K Walsh
Journal of Climate | Published : 2014
Abstract
A feature of the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) is its positive skewness, with cold IOD east pole (IODE) sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) exhibiting larger amplitudes than warm SSTAs. Using the coupled Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Earth System Model with Modular Ocean Model version 4 (MOM4) component (GFDL-ESM2M), the role of nonlinear feedbacks in generating this positive skewness is investigated and their response to global warming examined. These feedbacks are a nonlinear dynamic heating process, the Bjerknes feedback, wind-evaporation-SST feedback, and SST-cloud-radiation feedback. Nonlinear dynamic heating assists IOD skewness by strongly damping warm IODE SSTAs and reinfor..
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Funding Acknowledgements
We thank the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory modeling team for producing and making available their model output and Agus Santoso for his helpful points of discussion. GODAS data were provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their website at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions, and Tim Cowan and Evan Weller for reviewing the paper before submission. B. Ng is grateful for the support of a CSIRO Office of the Chief Executive Science Leader studentship and a Melbourne Research Scholarship. W. Cai is supported by the Australian Climate Change Science Programme and the CSIRO Wealth from Oceans flagship.