Climate Phenomena and Their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change Supplementary Material

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Climate Phenomena and Their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change Supplementary Material Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change Supplementary Material Coordinating Lead Authors: 14SM Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen (Denmark), Krishna Kumar Kanikicharla (India) Lead Authors: Edvin Aldrian (Indonesia), Soon-Il An (Republic of Korea), Iracema Fonseca Albuquerque Cavalcanti (Brazil), Manuel de Castro (Spain), Wenjie Dong (China), Prashant Goswami (India), Alex Hall (USA), Joseph Katongo Kanyanga (Zambia), Akio Kitoh (Japan), James Kossin (USA), Ngar-Cheung Lau (USA), James Renwick (New Zealand), David B. Stephenson (UK), Shang-Ping Xie (USA), Tianjun Zhou (China) Contributing Authors: Libu Abraham (Qatar), Tércio Ambrizzi (Brazil), Bruce Anderson (USA), Osamu Arakawa (Japan), Raymond Arritt (USA), Mark Baldwin (UK), Mathew Barlow (USA), David Barriopedro (Spain), Michela Biasutti (USA), Sébastien Biner (Canada), David Bromwich (USA), Josephine Brown (Australia), Wenju Cai (Australia), Leila V. Carvalho (USA/Brazil), Ping Chang (USA), Xiaolong Chen (China), Jung Choi (Republic of Korea), Ole Bøssing Christensen (Denmark), Clara Deser (USA), Kerry Emanuel (USA), Hirokazu Endo (Japan), David B. Enfield (USA), Amato Evan (USA), Alessandra Giannini (USA), Nathan Gillett (Canada), Annamalai Hariharasubramanian (USA), Ping Huang (China), Julie Jones (UK), Ashok Karumuri (India), Jack Katzfey (Australia), Erik Kjellström (Sweden), Jeff Knight (UK), Thomas Knutson (USA), Ashwini Kulkarni (India), Koteswara Rao Kundeti (India), William K. Lau (USA), Geert Lenderink (Netherlands), Chris Lennard (South Africa), Lai-yung Ruby Leung (USA), Renping Lin (China), Teresa Losada (Spain), Neil C. Mackellar (South Africa), Victor Magaña (Mexico), Gareth Marshall (UK), Linda Mearns (USA), Gerald Meehl (USA), Claudio Menéndez (Argentina), Hiroyuki Murakami (USA/Japan), Mary Jo Nath (USA), J. David Neelin (USA), Geert Jan van Oldenborgh (Netherlands), Martin Olesen (Denmark), Jan Polcher (France), Yun Qian (USA), Suchanda Ray (India), Katharine Davis Reich (USA), Belén Rodriguez de Fonseca (Spain), Paolo Ruti (Italy), James Screen (UK), Jan Sedláček (Switzerland) Silvina Solman (Argentina), Martin Stendel (Denmark), Samantha Stevenson (USA), Izuru Takayabu (Japan), John Turner (UK), Caroline Ummenhofer (USA), Kevin Walsh (Australia), Bin Wang (USA), Chunzai Wang (USA), Ian Watterson (Australia), Matthew Widlansky (USA), Andrew Wittenberg (USA), Tim Woollings (UK), Sang-Wook Yeh (Republic of Korea), Chidong Zhang (USA), Lixia Zhang (China), Xiaotong Zheng (China), Liwei Zou (China) Review Editors: John Fyfe (Canada), Won-Tae Kwon (Republic of Korea), Kevin Trenberth (USA), David Wratt (New Zealand) This chapter supplementary material should be cited as: Christensen, J.H., K. Krishna Kumar, E. Aldrian, S.-I. An, I.F.A. Cavalcanti, M. de Castro, W. Dong, P. Goswami, A. Hall, J.K. Kanyanga, A. Kitoh, J. Kossin, N.-C. Lau, J. Renwick, D.B. Stephenson, S.-P. Xie and T. Zhou, 2013: Cli- mate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change Supplementary Material. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Available from www.climatechange2013.org and www.ipcc.ch. 14SM-1 Table of Contents 14.SM.1 Monsoon Systems ......................................... 14SM-3 14.SM.2 El Niño-Southern Oscillation and Its Flavours ..................................................... 14SM-6 14.SM.3 Annular and Dipolar Modes ...................... 14SM-6 14.SM.4 Large-scale Storm Systems ........................ 14SM-7 14.SM.5 Additional Phenomena of Relevance ................................................. 14SM-10 14.SM.6 Future Regional Climate Change ........... 14SM-10 References .......................................................................... 14SM-56 14SM 14SM-2 Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change Chapter 14 Supplementary Material 14.SM.1 Monsoon Systems 14.SM.1.3.1 South America Monsoon System 14.SM.1.1 Global Overview Although the changes in wind direction from winter to summer occur only in a small area within South America, there are large differences Monsoons are seasonal phenomena and are responsible for the major- in the atmospheric circulation and in sources of humidity from winter ity of summer rainfall within the tropics. In the classical view, the mon- to summer. These differences are related to the rainy season in central soon is driven by the seasonal cycle of solar heating and difference in and southeastern Brazil, which begins at the middle/end of spring and thermal inertia of land and ocean that establish a land–sea tempera- finishes at the middle/end of autumn(Silva and Carvalho, 2007; Raia ture difference. This contrast, with the land being warmer than the sur- and Cavalcanti, 2008). rounding ocean in late spring and summer, gives favourable conditions for the occurrence of convection in the summer hemisphere, allowing The lifecycle of the South America Monsoon System (SAMS) is dis- the monsoon to be viewed as a seasonal migration of the Inter-Tropi- cussed in Raia and Cavalcanti (2008), where the main atmospheric cal Convergence Zone (ITCZ). As the monsoon season matures, latent characteristics in the onset and demise are related to the rainy season. heat released by convection high above the land surface helps to pull The changes in humidity flux linked to the low-level flow changes over in additional moisture from nearby oceans over the land, maintaining the northernmost part of South America and the Amazonia region, the wet season. This thermal forcing depends on large-scale orography eastward shifting of subtropical high, strong northwesterly moisture and controls the regional monsoon domain and intensity. The land–sea flux east of tropical Andes, are the main features in the onset. At high temperature difference is projected to become larger in the summer levels, the Bolivian High and the Northeast High Level Cyclonic Vortex season as seen from larger warming over land than ocean (Section are established during this period. The moisture flux from the Atlantic 12.4.3.1 and Annex I Figures AI.4 to AI.5). However, this does not lead Ocean over northern South America, crossing the Amazonia region and to a generally stronger monsoon circulations in the future, as chang- directed to the southeast, increases the humidity over southeastern es in regional monsoon characteristics are rather complex. In broad Brazil, favouring the intensification of convection there. The resulting terms, the precipitation characteristics over Asia-Australia, Americas coupling between Amazonia convection and frontal systems, and the and Africa can be viewed as an integrated global monsoon system, favourable high-level anomalous circulation over the continent, often associated with a global-scale persistent atmospheric overturning cir- associated with the Pacific–South American (PSA) wave train, origi- culation (Trenberth et al., 2000). Wang and Ding (2008) demonstrated nate the South Atlantic Convergence Zone (SACZ). The whole cycle of that the global monsoon is the dominant mode of annual variation of SAMS comprises three stages, the rainfall beginning over northwestern the tropical circulation, characterizing the seasonality of the Earth’s South America, SACZ establishment and precipitation increase over the climate in tropical latitudes. The monsoon-affected region is, however, mouth of Amazon River (Nieto-Ferreira and Rickenbach, 2010). not uniform in the historical record (Conroy and Overpeck, 2011), and it could vary in the future. In a recent review of SAMS, the main structure and lifecycle; the onset features; and the diurnal, mesoscale, synoptic, intraseasonal, interan- 14.SM.1.2 Definition of Global Monsoon Area, Global nual and inter-decadal variability are discussed, as well as the long- Monsoon Total Precipitation and Global term variability and climate change (Marengo et al., 2010). Monsoon Precipitation Intensity Jones and Carvalho (2013) used the Large–scale Index for South Ameri- The global monsoon area (GMA) is defined as where the annual ca Monsoon LISAM index (Silva and Carvalho, 2007), which is obtained range of precipitation exceeds 2.5 mm day–1. Here, the annual range from the combined Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis of is defined as the difference between the May to September (MJJAS) low-level (850 hPa) zonal and meridional winds, temperature and spe- mean and the November to March (NDJFM) mean. The global monsoon cific humidity. total precipitation (GMP) is defined as the mean of summer rainfall in the monsoon area. The global monsoon precipitation intensity (GMI) is Seasonal precipitation variability over South America is well represent- defined as GMP divided by GMA. ed by Atmospheric General Circulation Models (AGCMs) and Coupled General Circulation Models (CGCMs), mainly the large differences 14.SM.1.3 Definition of Monsoon Onset, Retreat between summer and winter. However, the intensity or configuration and Duration of rainfall patterns in the summer season is not well represented by some models. Vera et al. (2006), and Vera and Silvestri (2009) analysed Monsoon onset date, retreat date and its duration are determined using seven models of World Climate Research Programme–Coupled Model the criteria proposed by Wang and LinHo (2002) utilizing only precipita- Intercomparison Project
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