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