Physical Processes Driving Year-to-Year Surface Temperature Variability Changes in a Warming Climate

Abstract

Under anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, climate models project a decrease in year-to-year temperature variability in the mid-to-high latitudes and an increase in the tropics and subtropics. Here, we examine year-to-year temperature variability in the CESM Large Ensemble in concert with an idealized stochastic moist energy balance model (SMEBM) with effective surface heat capacity and local feedback parameter specified based on CESM. We find that the zonal-mean CESM variability change pattern largely persists after filtering out the impact of El Niño. The SMEBM largely captures this change pattern. In the SMEBM, changes in the mid-to-high latitudes are driven by changes in the effective heat capacity due to sea ice retreat, combined with changes in anomalous moist static energy convergence modulated by the polar-amplified time-mean temperature change. The CESM local feedback parameter evolves to be less stabilizing in the low latitudes, which causes tropical and subtropical variability to increase in the SMEBM.