Radiative and Dynamical Controls on the Land-Ocean Warming Contrast in Climate Models

Abstract

Surface air over land warms substantially more than over the ocean under greenhouse forcing, a phenomenon known as the land-ocean warming contrast. Current explanations for this contrast are commonly expressed either in terms of energetic constraints, from top-of-atmosphere and surface energy balance, or dynamical constraints, from large-scale atmospheric dynamics. We show that these perspectives are complementary when viewed through the lens of atmospheric moist static energy (MSE) transport, and that connecting them yields new insight into the controls of the warming contrast and the spread in climate models. We use this framework to construct an interpretable emulator that reproduces the land-ocean warming response across 22 models from the latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). We find that the strength of the land-ocean warming contrast emerges from the interplay between a model-dependent radiative baseline and a robust dynamical restoring mechanism that favors greater warming over land. This interplay leads to two broad model regimes that align with climate sensitivity. In low-climate-sensitivity models, more stabilizing radiative feedbacks over the ocean directly favor greater land warming. In high-climate-sensitivity models, radiative feedbacks alone would instead favor greater ocean warming, but a strong MSE-transport feedback (approximately 0.2 PW/K) more than compensates for this tendency. The intermodel spread in the land-ocean warming contrast is closely related to the ratio of radiative feedbacks over land and ocean, highlighting a broader connection between climate sensitivity and the land-ocean warming contrast.