Articles | Volume 16, issue 12
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-7559-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-7559-2016
Research article
 | 
21 Jun 2016
Research article |  | 21 Jun 2016

Strong modification of stratospheric ozone forcing by cloud and sea-ice adjustments

Yan Xia, Yongyun Hu, and Yi Huang

Abstract. We investigate the climatic impact of stratospheric ozone recovery (SOR), with a focus on the surface temperature change in atmosphere–slab ocean coupled climate simulations. We find that although SOR would cause significant surface warming (global mean: 0.2 K) in a climate free of clouds and sea ice, it causes surface cooling (−0.06 K) in the real climate. The results here are especially interesting in that the stratosphere-adjusted radiative forcing is positive in both cases. Radiation diagnosis shows that the surface cooling is mainly due to a strong radiative effect resulting from significant reduction of global high clouds and, to a lesser extent, from an increase in high-latitude sea ice. Our simulation experiments suggest that clouds and sea ice are sensitive to stratospheric ozone perturbation, which constitutes a significant radiative adjustment that influences the sign and magnitude of the global surface temperature change.

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Short summary
In this work, we discover a strong cloud radiative adjustment that affects the sign of the global surface temperature change in response to stratospheric ozone forcing. We believe this discovery is both interesting, in that our GCM experiments show that a global cooling can result from a warming forcing, and new, in that a strong cloud adjustment to ozone forcing, to the best of our knowledge, has not being documented before.
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