Present-day North Atlantic salinity constrains future warming of the Northern Hemisphere

In-Hong Park, Sang-Wook Yeh (), Wenju Cai, Guojian Wang, Seung-Ki Min and Sang-Ki Lee
Additional contact information
In-Hong Park: Hanyang University, ERICA
Sang-Wook Yeh: Hanyang University, ERICA
Wenju Cai: Center for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research (CSHOR), CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere
Guojian Wang: Center for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research (CSHOR), CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere
Seung-Ki Min: Pohang University of Science and Technology
Sang-Ki Lee: NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory

Nature Climate Change, 2023, vol. 13, issue 8, 816-822

Abstract: Abstract Earth system models exhibit considerable intermodel spread in Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation intensity and its carbon uptake, resulting in great uncertainty in future climate. Here we show that present-day sea surface salinity (SSS) in the North Atlantic subpolar region modulates anthropogenic carbon uptake in the North Atlantic, and thus can be used to constrain future warming. Specifically, models that generate a present-day higher SSS in the North Atlantic subpolar region generate a greater uptake of anthropogenic carbon in the future, suppressing the greenhouse effect and resulting in slower warming, and vice versa in models with a present-day lower SSS. Emergent constraints based on the observed SSS greatly reduce the uncertainty of the Northern Hemisphere surface temperature warming and accumulative carbon uptake by about 30% and 53%, respectively, by the end of the twenty-first century under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 5–8.5 scenario.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01728-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:13:y:2023:i:8:d:10.1038_s41558-023-01728-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01728-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().