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Abstract:

Tropical rainforests in Africa are one of the most under-researched regions in the world, but research in the Amazonian rainforest suggests potential vulnerability to climate change. Using the large ensemble of Atmosphere-only general circulation model (AGCM) simulations within the weather@home project, statistics of precipitation in the dry season of the Congo Basin rainforest are analysed. By validating the model simulation against observations, we could identify a good model performance for the June, July, August (JJA) dry season, but this result does need to be taken with caution as observed data are of poor quality. Additional validation methods have been used to investigate the applicability of probabilistic event attribution analysis from large model ensembles to a tropical region, in this case the Congo Basin. These methods corroborate the confidence in the model, leading us to believe the attribution result to be robust. That is, that there are no significant changes in the risk of low precipitation extremes during this dry season (JJA) precipitation in the Congo Basin. Results for the December, January, February dry season are less clear. The study highlights that attribution analysis has the potential to provide valuable scientific evidence of recent or anticipated climatological changes, especially in regions with sparse observational data and unclear projections of future changes. However, the strong influence of sea surface temperature teleconnection patterns on tropical precipitation provides more challenges in the set up of attribution studies than midlatitude rainfall.

Abstract:

The Antarctic polar night jet has intensified during spring in recent decades due to stratospheric ozone depletion and rising greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations and this has had substantial effects on the region's climate. GHG concentrations will rise over the 21st century whereas stratospheric ozone is expected to recover and there is uncertainty in future southern hemisphere (SH) circulation trends. We examine sensitivity to the physics parameterisation of the 21st century SH circulation projection of a coupled atmosphere-ocean General Circulation Model and the sensitivity of the contribution from stratospheric ozone recovery. Different model parameterizations give a greater range of future trends in the position of the tropospheric jet than has been found in previous multi-model comparisons. Ozone recovery causes a weakening and northward shift of the DJF tropospheric jet. Varying the physics parameterization affects the zonal wind response to ozone recovery of the SON stratosphere by ∼10% and that of the DJF troposphere by ∼25%. The projected future SAM index changes with and without ozone recovery and the SAM index response to ozone recovery alone are found to be strongly positively correlated with projected 21st century global warming. © 2012. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.