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.

Changes in the sea surface temperature threshold for tropical convection

Nature Geoscience volume 3, pages 842–845 (2010)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Deep convection over tropical oceans is observed generally above a threshold for sea surface temperatures1,2,3,4, which falls in the vicinity of 26–28 °C. High-resolution models suggest that the related sea surface temperature threshold for tropical cyclones rises in a warming climate5,6. Some observations for the past few decades, however, show that tropical tropospheric warming has been nearly uniform vertically7,8, suggesting that the troposphere may have become less stable and casting doubts on the possibility that the sea surface temperature threshold increases substantially with global warming. Here we turn to satellite observations of rainfall for the past 30 years. We detect significant covariability between tropical mean sea surface temperatures and the convective threshold on interannual and longer timescales. In addition, we find a parallel upward trend of approximately 0.1 °C/decade over the past 30 years in both the convective threshold and tropical mean sea surface temperatures. We conclude that, in contrast with some observational indications, the tropical troposphere has warmed in a way that is consistent with moist-adiabatic adjustment, in agreement with global climate model simulations.

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

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

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

Figure 1: Time series of tropical mean SST and the SST threshold for convection.
Figure 2: The relationship between the SST threshold for convection and upper-tropospheric temperature in global climate models.
Figure 3: Twenty-first-century changes in rainfall rate and SST frequency distributions.

References

  1. Gadgil, S., Joseph, V. & Joshi, N. V. Ocean-atmosphere coupling over monsoon regions. Nature 312, 141–143 (1984).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Graham, N. E. & Barnett, T. P. Sea surface temperature, surface wind divergence, and convection over tropical oceans. Science 238, 657–659 (1987).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Zhang, C. Large-scale variability of atmospheric deep convection in relation to sea surface temperature in the tropics. J. Clim. 6, 1898–1913 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Sud, Y. C., Walker, G. K. & Lau, K-M. Mechanisms regulating sea-surface temperatures and deep convection in the tropics. Geophys. Res. Lett. 26, 1019–1022 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Yoshimura, J., Sugi, M. & Noda, A. Influence of greenhouse warming on tropical cyclone frequency. J. Meteorol. Soc. Jpn 84, 405–428 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Knutson, T. R., Sirutis, J. J., Garner, S. T., Vecchi, G. A. & Held, I. M. Simulated reduction in Atlantic hurricane frequency under twenty-first-century warming conditions. Nature Geosci. 1, 359–364 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Santer, B. D. et al. Amplification of surface temperature trends and variability in the tropical atmosphere. Science 309, 1551–1556 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Karl, T. R., Hassol, S. J., Miller, C. D. & Murray, W. L. (eds) in Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences (A report by the Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, Washington, 2006).

  9. Pierrehumbert, R. T. Thermostats, radiator fins, and the local runaway greenhouse. J. Atmos. Sci. 52, 1784–1806 (1995).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Williams, I. N., Pierrehumbert, R. T. & Huber, M. Global warming, convective threshold, and false thermostats. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L21805 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Sobel, A. H., Nilsson, J. & Polvani, L. M. The weak temperature gradient approximation and balanced tropical moisture waves. J. Atmos. Sci. 58, 3650–3665 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Williams, E. & Renno, N. An analysis of the conditional instability of the tropical atmosphere. J. Clim. 121, 21–36 (1993).

    Google Scholar 

  13. Bhat, G. S., Srinivasan, J. & Gadgil, S. Tropical deep convection, convective available potential energy and sea surface temperature. J. Meteorol. Soc. Jpn 74, 155–166 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Fu, R., Del Genio, A. D. & Rossow, W. B. Influence of ocean surface conditions on atmospheric vertical thermodynamic structure and deep convection. J. Clim. 7, 1092–1108 (1994).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Stone, P. H. & Carlson, J. H. Atmospheric lapse rate regimes and their parameterization. J. Atmos. Sci. 36, 415–423 (1979).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Adler, R. F. et al. The Version 2 Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) monthly precipitation analysis (1979–Present). J. Hydrometeorol. 4, 1147–1167 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Xie, P. & Arkin, P. A. Global precipitation: A 17-year monthly analysis based on gauge observations, satellite estimates, and numerical model outputs. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 78, 2539–2558 (1997).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Lau, K-M. & Wu, H-T. Detecting trends in tropical rainfall characteristics, 1979–2003. Int. J. Climatol. 27, 979–988 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Smith, T. M., Reynolds, R. W., Peterson, T. C. & Lawrimore, J. Improvements to NOAA’s historical merged land–ocean surface temperature analysis (1880–2006). J. Clim. 21, 2283–2296 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Back, L. & Bretherton, C. S. A simple model of climatological rainfall and vertical motion patterns over tropical oceans. J. Clim. 22, 6477–6497 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Sobel, A. H., Held, I. M. & Bretherton, C. S. The ENSO signal in tropical tropospheric temperature. J. Clim. 15, 2702–2706 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Meehl, G. A. et al. The WCRP CMIP3 multimodel dataset: A new era in climate change research. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 88, 1383–1394 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Su, H., Neelin, D. & Meyerson, J. E. Sensitivity of tropical tropospheric temperature to sea surface temperature forcing. J. Clim. 16, 1283–1301 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Solomon, S. (ed.) in Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).

  25. Sherwood, S. C., Meyer, C. L., Allen, R. J. & Titchner, H. A. et al. Robust tropospheric warming revealed by iteratively homogenized radiosonde data. J. Clim. 21, 5336–5350 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Lanzante, J. R. & Free, M. Comparison of radiosonde and GCM temperature trend profiles: Effects of dataset choice and data homogenization. J. Clim. 21, 5417–5435 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Allen, R. J. & Sherwood, S. C. Warming maximum in the tropical upper troposphere deduced from thermal winds. Nature Geosci. 1, 399–403 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Vecchi, G. A. & Soden, B. J. Global warming and the weakening of the tropical circulation. J. Clim. 20, 4316–4338 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Xie, S-P et al. Global warming pattern formation: Sea surface temperature and rainfall. J. Clim. 23, 966–986 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, for the CMAP, GPCP and ERSST Version 3b data, which were provided by their website at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/. We acknowledge the modelling groups, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multi-model data set. Support of this data set is provided by the Office of Science, US Department of Energy. N.C.J. and S-P.X. were supported by grants from NOAA, NSF, NASA and JAMSTEC.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Pacific Research Center, SOEST, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA

    Nathaniel C. Johnson

  2. International Pacific Research Center and Department of Meteorology, SOEST, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA

    Shang-Ping Xie

Authors
  1. Nathaniel C. Johnson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Shang-Ping Xie
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Both N.C.J. and S-P.X. contributed to the central ideas presented in the paper. N.C.J. carried out the analysis and wrote the paper. S-P.X. offered guidance and contributed to the editing of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nathaniel C. Johnson.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (PDF 1945 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Johnson, N., Xie, SP. Changes in the sea surface temperature threshold for tropical convection. Nature Geosci 3, 842–845 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1008

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1008

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced 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