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Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models
Observations over the 20th century evidence no long-term warming in the subpolar North Atlantic (SPG). This region even experienced a rapid cooling around 1970, raising a debate over its potential reoccurrence. Here we assess the risk of future abrupt SPG cooling in 40 climate models from the fifth...
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/PMC5330854/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28198383 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14375 |
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author | Sgubin, Giovanni Swingedouw, Didier Drijfhout, Sybren Mary, Yannick Bennabi, Amine |
author_facet | Sgubin, Giovanni Swingedouw, Didier Drijfhout, Sybren Mary, Yannick Bennabi, Amine |
author_sort | Sgubin, Giovanni |
collection | PubMed |
description | Observations over the 20th century evidence no long-term warming in the subpolar North Atlantic (SPG). This region even experienced a rapid cooling around 1970, raising a debate over its potential reoccurrence. Here we assess the risk of future abrupt SPG cooling in 40 climate models from the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Contrary to the long-term SPG warming trend evidenced by most of the models, 17.5% of the models (7/40) project a rapid SPG cooling, consistent with a collapse of the local deep-ocean convection. Uncertainty in projections is associated with the models’ varying capability in simulating the present-day SPG stratification, whose realistic reproduction appears a necessary condition for the onset of a convection collapse. This event occurs in 45.5% of the 11 models best able to simulate the observed SPG stratification. Thus, due to systematic model biases, the CMIP5 ensemble as a whole underestimates the chance of future abrupt SPG cooling, entailing crucial implications for observation and adaptation policy. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5330854 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-53308542017-03-21 Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models Sgubin, Giovanni Swingedouw, Didier Drijfhout, Sybren Mary, Yannick Bennabi, Amine Nat Commun Article Observations over the 20th century evidence no long-term warming in the subpolar North Atlantic (SPG). This region even experienced a rapid cooling around 1970, raising a debate over its potential reoccurrence. Here we assess the risk of future abrupt SPG cooling in 40 climate models from the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Contrary to the long-term SPG warming trend evidenced by most of the models, 17.5% of the models (7/40) project a rapid SPG cooling, consistent with a collapse of the local deep-ocean convection. Uncertainty in projections is associated with the models’ varying capability in simulating the present-day SPG stratification, whose realistic reproduction appears a necessary condition for the onset of a convection collapse. This event occurs in 45.5% of the 11 models best able to simulate the observed SPG stratification. Thus, due to systematic model biases, the CMIP5 ensemble as a whole underestimates the chance of future abrupt SPG cooling, entailing crucial implications for observation and adaptation policy. Nature Publishing Group 2017-02-15 /pmc/articles/PMC5330854/ /pubmed/28198383 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14375 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 Sgubin, Giovanni Swingedouw, Didier Drijfhout, Sybren Mary, Yannick Bennabi, Amine Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title | Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title_full | Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title_fullStr | Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title_full_unstemmed | Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title_short | Abrupt cooling over the North Atlantic in modern climate models |
title_sort | abrupt cooling over the north atlantic in modern climate models |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5330854/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28198383 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14375 |
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