Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Divergent global precipitation changes induced by natural versus anthropogenic forcing

Abstract

As a result of global warming, precipitation is likely to increase in high latitudes and the tropics and to decrease in already dry subtropical regions1. The absolute magnitude and regional details of such changes, however, remain intensely debated2,3. As is well known from El Niño studies, sea-surface-temperature gradients across the tropical Pacific Ocean can strongly influence global rainfall4,5. Palaeoproxy evidence indicates that the difference between the warm west Pacific and the colder east Pacific increased in past periods when the Earth warmed as a result of increased solar radiation6,7,8,9. In contrast, in most model projections of future greenhouse warming this gradient weakens2,10,11. It has not been clear how to reconcile these two findings. Here we show in climate model simulations that the tropical Pacific sea-surface-temperature gradient increases when the warming is due to increased solar radiation and decreases when it is due to increased greenhouse-gas forcing. For the same global surface temperature increase the latter pattern produces less rainfall, notably over tropical land, which explains why in the model the late twentieth century is warmer than in the Medieval Warm Period (around ad 1000–1250) but precipitation is less. This difference is consistent with the global tropospheric energy budget12, which requires a balance between the latent heat released in precipitation and radiative cooling. The tropospheric cooling is less for increased greenhouse gases, which add radiative absorbers to the troposphere, than for increased solar heating, which is concentrated at the Earth’s surface. Thus warming due to increased greenhouse gases produces a climate signature different from that of warming due to solar radiation changes.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: The external forcing and responses.
Figure 2: Scatter plot of decadal means of the global mean precipitation rate versus the global mean temperature, at 2 m above the surface.
Figure 3: Spatial patterns of the solar–volcanic forced mode.
Figure 4: Comparison of the changes in annual mean precipitation and SST.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Meehl, G. A. et al. Global climate projections. In Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (eds Solomon, S. et al.) 747–845 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007)

  2. Held, I. M. & Soden, B. J. Robust responses of the hydrological cycle to global warming. J. Clim. 19, 5686–5699 (2006)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Wentz, F., Ricciardulli, L., Hilburn, K. & Mears, C. How much more rain will global warming bring? Science 317, 233–235 (2007)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Ropelewski, C. F. & Halpert, M. S. Global and regional scale precipitation patterns associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. Mon. Weath. Rev. 115, 1606–1626 (1987)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Ropelewski, C. F. & Halpert, M. S. Quantifying Southern Oscillation–precipitation relationships. J. Clim. 9, 1043–1059 (1996)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Adams, J. B., Mann, M. E. & Ammann, C. M. Proxy evidence for an El Niño-like response to volcanic forcing. Nature 426, 274–278 (2003)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Cobb, K. M., Charles, C. D., Cheng, H. & Edwards, R. L. El Niño-Southern Oscillation and tropical Pacific climate during the last millennium. Nature 424, 271–276 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Mann, M. E., Cane, M. A., Zebiak, S. E. & Clement, A. Volcanic and solar forcing of the tropical Pacific over the past 1000 years. J. Clim. 18, 447–456 (2005)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. Mann, M. E. et al. Global signatures and dynamical origins of the little ice age and medieval climate anomaly. Science 326, 1256–1260 (2009)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Meehl, G. A. & Washington, W. M. El Niño like climate change in a model with increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. Nature 382, 56–60 (1996)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Vecchi, G. A. et al. Weakening of tropical Pacific atmospheric circulation due to anthropogenic forcing. Nature 441, 73–76 (2006)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Allen, M. R. & Ingram, W. J. Constraints on future changes in climate and the hydrologic cycle. Nature 419, 224–232 (2002)

    ADS  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Mann, M. E. Climate over the past two millennia. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 35, 111–136 (2007)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Mann, M. E., Bradley, R. S. & Hughes, M. K. Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: inferences, uncertainties, and limitations. Geophys. Res. Lett. 26, 759–762 (1999)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  15. Moberg, A., Sonechkin, D. M., Holmgren, K., Datsenko, N. M. & Karlen, W. Highly variable northern hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data. Nature 433, 613–617 (2005)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Pauling, A., Luterbacher, J., Casty, C. & Wanner, H. 500 years of gridded high resolution precipitation reconstructions over Europe and the connection to large scale circulation. Clim. Dyn. 26, 387–405 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Dore, M. H. I. Climate change and changes in global precipitation patterns: what do we know? Environ. Int. 31, 1167–1181 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Min, S. K. & Hense, A. A Bayesian assessment of climate change using multimodel ensembles. Part I: global mean surface temperature. J. Clim. 19, 3237–3256 (2006)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  19. Rodgers, K. B., Friedriches, P. & Latif, M. Tropical Pacific decadal variability and its relationship to decadal modulations of ENSO. J. Clim. 17, 3761–3774 (2004)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  20. Liu, J. et al. Centennial variations of the global monsoon precipitation in the last millennium: results from the ECHO-G model. J. Clim. 22, 2356–2371 (2009)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. von Storch, H. et al. Reconstructing past climate from noisy data. Science 306, 679–682 (2004)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Wallace, J. M., Smith, C. & Bretherton, C. S. Singular value decomposition of wintertime sea surface temperature and 500-mb height anomalies. J. Clim. 5, 561–576 (1992)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Clement, A. C., Seager, R., Cane, M. A. & Zebiak, S. E. An ocean dynamical thermostat. J. Clim. 9, 2190–2196 (1996)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Cane, M. A. et al. 20th century sea surface temperature trends. Science 275, 957–960 (1997)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Vecchi, G. A., Clement, A. & Soden, B. J. Examining the tropical Pacific’s response to global warming. Eos 89, 81 (2008)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  26. Bauer, E., Claussen, M. & Brovkin, V. Assessing climate forcings of the Earth system for the past millennium. Geophys. Res. Lett. 30, 1276 (2003)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  27. Emile-Geay, J., Seager, R., Cane, M. A., Cook, E. R. & Haug, G. H. Volcanoes and ENSO over the last millennium. J. Clim. 21, 3134–3148 (2008)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  28. Zorita, E., Gonzalez-Rouco, J. F., von Storch, H., Montavez, P. & Valero, F. Natural and anthropogenic modes of surface temperature variations in the last thousand years. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L08707 (2005)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Legutke, S. & Voss, R. The Hamburg Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled Circulation Model ECHO-G. Technical Report 18, 1–62 (German Climate Computer Center (DKRZ), 1999)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Lee, J. Y. & Wang, B. Future change of global monsoon in the CMIP5. Clim. Dyn 10.1007/s00382-012-1564-0 (2012)

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program (award numbers 2010CB950102 and XDA05080800 to J.L.) and Natural Science Foundation of China (award number 40871007 to J.L. and B.W.). B.W. and J.-Y.L. acknowledge the Global Research Laboratory (GRL) Program from the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST, 2011-0021927). M.A.C. was supported by grant DE-SC0005108 from the Department of Energy and NOAA grant NA08OAR4320912. B.W., S.-Y.Y. and J.-Y.L. acknowledge support from the International Pacific Research Center, which is funded jointly by JAMSTEC, NOAA and NASA. We thank E. Zorita for providing ECHO-G millennium run data, and A. Hense and S.-K. Min for providing ECHO-G A1B and greenhouse-gas run data.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

J.L. initiated the research. J.L., B.W. and M.A.C. contributed to the research and wrote the manuscript. S.-Y.Y. and J.-Y.L. made analyses and contributed to the graphics.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jian Liu or Mark A. Cane.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Methods, additional references and Supplementary Figures 1-8. (PDF 2707 kb)

PowerPoint slides

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Liu, J., Wang, B., Cane, M. et al. Divergent global precipitation changes induced by natural versus anthropogenic forcing. Nature 493, 656–659 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11784

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11784

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing