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Fewer clouds in the Mediterranean: consistency of observations and climate simulations
Clouds play a major role in the climate system, but large uncertainties remain about their decadal variations. Here we report a widespread decrease in cloud cover since the 1970 s over the Mediterranean region, in particular during the 1970 s–1980 s, especially in the central and eastern areas and d...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5288658/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28148960 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep41475 |
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author | Sanchez-Lorenzo, Arturo Enriquez-Alonso, Aaron Calbó, Josep González, Josep-Abel Wild, Martin Folini, Doris Norris, Joel R. Vicente-Serrano, Sergio M. |
author_facet | Sanchez-Lorenzo, Arturo Enriquez-Alonso, Aaron Calbó, Josep González, Josep-Abel Wild, Martin Folini, Doris Norris, Joel R. Vicente-Serrano, Sergio M. |
author_sort | Sanchez-Lorenzo, Arturo |
collection | PubMed |
description | Clouds play a major role in the climate system, but large uncertainties remain about their decadal variations. Here we report a widespread decrease in cloud cover since the 1970 s over the Mediterranean region, in particular during the 1970 s–1980 s, especially in the central and eastern areas and during springtime. Confidence in these findings is high due to the good agreement between the interannual variations of cloud cover provided by surface observations and several satellite-derived and reanalysis products, although some discrepancies exist in their trends. Climate model simulations of the historical experiment from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) also exhibit a decrease in cloud cover over the Mediterranean since the 1970 s, in agreement with surface observations, although the rate of decrease is slightly lower. The observed northward expansion of the Hadley cell is discussed as a possible cause of detected trends. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5288658 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-52886582017-02-06 Fewer clouds in the Mediterranean: consistency of observations and climate simulations Sanchez-Lorenzo, Arturo Enriquez-Alonso, Aaron Calbó, Josep González, Josep-Abel Wild, Martin Folini, Doris Norris, Joel R. Vicente-Serrano, Sergio M. Sci Rep Article Clouds play a major role in the climate system, but large uncertainties remain about their decadal variations. Here we report a widespread decrease in cloud cover since the 1970 s over the Mediterranean region, in particular during the 1970 s–1980 s, especially in the central and eastern areas and during springtime. Confidence in these findings is high due to the good agreement between the interannual variations of cloud cover provided by surface observations and several satellite-derived and reanalysis products, although some discrepancies exist in their trends. Climate model simulations of the historical experiment from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) also exhibit a decrease in cloud cover over the Mediterranean since the 1970 s, in agreement with surface observations, although the rate of decrease is slightly lower. The observed northward expansion of the Hadley cell is discussed as a possible cause of detected trends. Nature Publishing Group 2017-02-02 /pmc/articles/PMC5288658/ /pubmed/28148960 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep41475 Text en Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Sanchez-Lorenzo, Arturo Enriquez-Alonso, Aaron Calbó, Josep González, Josep-Abel Wild, Martin Folini, Doris Norris, Joel R. Vicente-Serrano, Sergio M. Fewer clouds in the Mediterranean: consistency of observations and climate simulations |
title | Fewer clouds in the Mediterranean: consistency of observations and climate simulations |
title_full | Fewer clouds in the Mediterranean: consistency of observations and climate simulations |
title_fullStr | Fewer clouds in the Mediterranean: consistency of observations and climate simulations |
title_full_unstemmed | Fewer clouds in the Mediterranean: consistency of observations and climate simulations |
title_short | Fewer clouds in the Mediterranean: consistency of observations and climate simulations |
title_sort | fewer clouds in the mediterranean: consistency of observations and climate simulations |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5288658/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28148960 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep41475 |
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