Differential Radiative Heating Drives Tropical Atmospheric Circulation Weakening

The tropical atmospheric circulation is projected to weaken during global warming, although the mechanisms that cause the weakening remain to be elucidated. We hypothesize that the weakening is related to the inhomogeneous distribution of the radiative forcing and feedback, which heats the tropical atmosphere in the ascending and subsiding regions differentially and thus requires the circulation to weaken due to energetic constraints. We test this hypothesis in a series of numerical experiments using a fully coupled general circulation model (GCM), in which the radiative forcing distribution is controlled using a novel method. The results affirm the effect of inhomogeneous forcing on the tropical circulation weakening, and this effect is greatly amplified by radiative feedback, especially that of clouds. In addition, we find that differential heating explains the intermodel differences in tropical circulation response to CO2 forcing in the GCM ensemble of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project.