Change of Global Ocean Temperature and Decadal Variability under 1.5 °C Warming in FOAM

Abstract

The rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is regarded as the dominant reason for observed warming since the mid-20th century. Based on the Paris Agreement target, this research designs three conceptual pathways to achieve the warming target of 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level by using the Fast Ocean Atmosphere Model. The three different scenarios contain one equilibrium experiment (equilibrium, EQ) and two transient experiments (never-exceed pathway, NE; overshoot pathway, OS). Then, we choose a ten year average that achieves 1.5 °C warming to calculate the climatology of the warming situation. Since OS achieves 1.5 °C twice, we obtain four warming situations to explore the response of ocean temperature. In 2100, the global ocean temperature increases over the global region, except the surface of the Southern Ocean. The difference in heat content mainly depends on the cumulative force of CO2 concentration. It is worth pointing out that during the increase in warming, the ocean surface temperature and heat content start to respond in different hemispheres. The weakening of decadal variability in the North Pacific and North Atlantic is robust in all three scenarios. However, there is a tremendous growth in the low-pass ocean surface temperature standard deviation in the Southern Ocean in EQ, which is different to NE and OS, and causes the increase in global mean total standard deviation. The shortening of decadal variability can only be seen from the EQ power spectrum, while NE and OS have similar power spectra with pre-industrial runs. It suggests that all previous studies that use equilibrium experiments data may have overestimated the shortening of decadal variability under global warming.

Keywords

• 1.5 °C warming
• global ocean temperature
• decadal variability