Abstract
The North Atlantic warming hole (NAWH) is referred to as a reduced warming, or even cooling, of the North Atlantic during an anthropogenic-driven global warming. A NAWH is predicted by climate models during the 21st century, and its pattern is already emerging in observations. Despite the known key role of the North Atlantic surface temperatures in setting the Northern Hemisphere climate, the mechanisms behind the NAWH are still not fully understood. Using state-of-the-art climate models, we show that anthropogenic aerosol forcing opposes the formation of the NAWH (by leading to a local warming) and delays its emergence by about 30 years. In agreement with previous studies, we also demonstrate that the relative warming of the North Atlantic under aerosol forcing is due to changes in ocean heat fluxes, rather than air-sea fluxes. These results suggest that the predicted reduction in aerosol forcing during the 21st century may accelerate the formation of the NAWH.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e2020GL090778 |
| Journal | Geophysical Research Letters |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue number | 22 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 28 Nov 2020 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) project constRaining the EffeCts of Aerosols on Precipitation (RECAP) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program with grant agreement 724602. P. S. additionally acknowledges support from the FORCeS project under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research program with grant agreement 821205. D. W. P. and P. S. receive funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program iMIRACLI under H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (2020–2024) grant agreement 860100 and also gratefully acknowledge funding from the NERC ACRUISE project NE/S005390/1. We acknowledge the WCRP's Working Group on Coupled Modeling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (listed in Table S1) for producing and making available their model output. We thank David Marshall and Rei Chemke for very fruitful discussions during the preparation of this paper.
Funding Information:
This research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) project constRaining the EffeCts of Aerosols on Precipitation (RECAP) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program with grant agreement 724602. P. S. additionally acknowledges support from the FORCeS project under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research program with grant agreement 821205. D. W. P. and P. S. receive funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program iMIRACLI under H2020 Marie Skłodowska‐Curie Innovative Training Network (2020–2024) grant agreement 860100 and also gratefully acknowledge funding from the NERC ACRUISE project NE/S005390/1. We acknowledge the WCRP's Working Group on Coupled Modeling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (listed in Table S1 ) for producing and making available their model output. We thank David Marshall and Rei Chemke for very fruitful discussions during the preparation of this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
©2020. The Authors.
Keywords
- AMOC
- GHGs
- North Atlantic
- aerosol
- warming hole
