Future continental summer warming constrained by the present-day seasonal cycle of surface hydrology.

ABSTRACT: Present-day land temperatures simulated by state-of-the-art global climate models exhibit considerable uncertainty. Generally it is assumed that these temperature biases do not affect the projected warming in response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations (i.e. drop out by subtracting projected and present-day temperatures), but for specific regions and seasons this assumption is invalid. Here we show that, on the contrary, for large continental regions, such as Europe, state-of-the art global climate models with a warm summer bias project a relatively strong warming. This is because continental summer temperatures depend chiefly on soil drying in response to spring and summer solar radiation increase: models that dry fastest (due to the interaction of clouds, convection and soil hydrolo

SUBMITTER: Selten FM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7069940 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature