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Tropical drought regions in global warming and El Niño teleconnections
Abstract
Climate model global warming simulations predict large regional changes in tropical rainfall, including regions of drought. Qualitatively similar changes occur during El Niño interannual variability. Using an intermediate climate model, we have identified a mechanism that creates regional reductions in precipitation at the margins of convection zones during warming. In this “upped‐ante mechanism”, a warm troposphere increases the value of surface boundary layer moisture required for convection to occur. In regions of plentiful moisture supply, moisture simply rises to maintain precipitation, but this increases the moisture gradient relative to neighboring subsidence regions. Reductions in rainfall then result for those margins of convection zones that have strong inflow of air from the subsidence regions and less frequently meet the increased “ante” for convection. In simulations analyzed here, this new mechanism is the leading cause of tropical drought in the global warming case and is dominant in certain El Niño drought regions.
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Citations
Cited by
Drought under global warming: a review
Dai, A. (2011) · WIREs Climate Change · doi:10.1002/wcc.81 · Cited by 3,523
Tropical drying trends in global warming models and observations
Neelin, J. D., Münnich, M., Su, H., Meyerson, J. E., & Holloway, C. E. (2006) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0601798103 · Cited by 498
Self-citationContrasting carbon cycle responses of the tropical continents to the 2015–2016 El Niño
Liu, J., Bowman, K. W., Schimel, D. S., Parazoo, N. C., Jiang, Z., Lee, M., Bloom, A. A., Wunch, D., Frankenberg, C., Sun, Y., et al. (2017) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aam5690 · Cited by 477
Mechanisms of Global Warming Impacts on Regional Tropical Precipitation*
Chou, C., & Neelin, J. D. (2004) · Journal of Climate · doi:10.1175/1520-0442(2004)017<2688:mogwio>2.0.co;2 · Cited by 474
Self-citationPatterns of the seasonal response of tropical rainfall to global warming
Huang, P., Xie, S.-P., Hu, K., Huang, G., & Huang, R. (2013) · Nature Geoscience · doi:10.1038/ngeo1792 · Cited by 389
Metadata
- Authors
- Neelin, J. D., Chou, C., & Su, H.
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2003-12
- Volume
- 30
- Issue
- 24
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W2167393797
- Cited by
- 279
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 14.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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