Climatic Response and Environmental Impact of Anthropogenic Forcing on the Multi-component Tropical Atmosphere/Ocean/Vegetation System

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The PIs will use a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean-land surface biosphere model to investigate the response of the tropical climate system to an increased concentration of CO2. They will study feedbacks among the atmosphere, ocean and land surface biophysical processes in the tropics and determine how the multi-component interaction affects the structure of the climate trend fingerprint. They will also investigate how global warming affects climate variability, such as El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Tropical Atlantic Oscillation (TAO). They will assess the impact of the change of tropical climate and climate variability on the tropical continents. In the Pacific region, the focus is on ocean-atmosphere interactions, while in the Atlantic region, the focus is on land-ocean-atmosphere interactions.The PIs will couple the NCAR CSM (T31 version) with the Lund-Potsdam-Jena (LPJ) land surface biosphere model. While maintaining the major climatic features of the standard NCAR CSM, the CSM-T31 is much more computationally efficient than the T42 version. The LPJ is an efficient dynamic vegetation model that can be used to simulate climate-biosphere interactions. This computationally efficient atmosphere-ocean-land biosphere model will be used to study the changes of both the climate mean state and climate variability at interannual to interdecadal time scales, as well as the impact of these changes on terrestrial ecosystems. The work is important because it will enhance understanding of the coupled land-atmosphere-ocean climate system on interannual to interdecadal scales.