Yale-NUIST Center on Atmospheric Environment, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, China.
School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Nat Commun. 2021 Apr 9;12(1):2115. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-22406-7.
Climate models generally predict higher precipitation in a future warmer climate. Whether the precipitation intensification occurred in response to historical warming continues to be a subject of debate. Here, using observations of the ocean surface energy balance as a hydrological constraint, we find that historical warming intensified precipitation at a rate of 0.68 ± 0.51% K, which is slightly higher than the multi-model mean calculation for the historical climate (0.38 ± 1.18% K). The reduction in ocean surface albedo associated with melting of sea ice is a positive contributor to the precipitation temperature sensitivity. On the other hand, the observed increase in ocean heat storage weakens the historical precipitation. In this surface energy balance framework, the incident shortwave radiation at the ocean surface and the ocean heat storage exert a dominant control on the precipitation temperature sensitivity, explaining 91% of the inter-model spread and the spread across climate scenarios in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report.
气候模型普遍预测未来更温暖的气候下降水会增加。降水的加剧是否是对历史变暖的响应，这仍然是一个争论的话题。在这里，我们利用海洋表面能量平衡的观测作为水文学限制，发现历史变暖以 0.68±0.51% K 的速率加强了降水，略高于历史气候的多模式平均值（0.38±1.18% K）。与海冰融化相关的海洋表面反照率降低是降水对温度敏感性的一个积极贡献。另一方面，观测到的海洋热存储增加削弱了历史降水。在这个表面能量平衡框架中，海洋表面的入射短波辐射和海洋热存储对降水对温度敏感性起着主导作用，解释了 91%的模型间差异和政府间气候变化专门委员会第五次评估报告中跨气候情景的差异。
