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Reduced tropical climate land area under global warming

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Adam_2023_GRL_Reduced_tropical_CC.pdf (2.416Mb)
Date
28/03/2023
Author
Adam, Ori
Liberty‐Levi, Noga
Byrne, Michael
Birner, Thomas
Keywords
Tropical widening
Subtropical widening
Subtropical dry zones
Tropical land area
Tropical rain belt
Hadley circulation
GE Environmental Sciences
3rd-DAS
SDG 13 - Climate Action
SDG 15 - Life on Land
MCC
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Abstract
Regions along the edges of the tropics host vast populations and ecosystems which are sensitive to climate change. Here we examine the extent of tropical land areas in the ERA5 and MERRA‐2 reanalyses and in high‐emission scenarios of 45 models participating in phases 5 and 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5/6). Based on the definition of tropical climate land areas as regions where the diurnal temperature range exceeds the seasonal temperature range, we find a net reduction of tropical land area with global warming. This change is primarily due to an increased seasonal temperature range driven by enhanced summer warming, which in turn is largely driven by reduced evaporative cooling. The reduction of tropical climate area is consistent with a narrowing of the tropical rain belt and with an equatorward and poleward expansion of the subtropical dry zones. Understanding the links between these trends requires further study.
Citation
Adam , O , Liberty‐Levi , N , Byrne , M & Birner , T 2023 , ' Reduced tropical climate land area under global warming ' , Geophysical Research Letters , vol. 50 , no. 6 , e2022GL102546 . https://doi.org/10.1029/2022gl102546
Publication
Geophysical Research Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1029/2022gl102546
ISSN
0094-8276
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2023. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
Funding: OA acknowledges support by ISF Grant 1022/21.
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/27302

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