In this study, we compiled a high-quality, in situ observational dataset to evaluate snow depth simulations from 22 CMIP6 models across high-latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere over the period 1955-2014. Simulated snow depths have low accuracy (RMSE = 17-36 cm) and are biased high, exceeding the observed baseline (1976-2005) on average (18 +/- 16 cm) across the study area. Spatial climatological patterns based on observations are modestly reproduced by the models (normalized root-mean-square deviations of 0.77 +/- 0.20). Observed snow depth during the cold season increased by about 2.0 cm over the study period, which is approximately 11% relative to the baseline. The models reproduce decreasing snow depth trends that contradict the observations, but they all indicate a precipitation increase during the cold season. The modeled snow depths are insensitive to precipitation but too sensitive to air temperature; these inaccurate sensitivities could explain the discrepancies between the observed and simulated snow depth trends. Based on our findings, we recommend caution when using and interpreting simulated changes in snow depth and associated impacts.

Hydrological conditions in cold regions have been shown to be sensitive to climate change. However, a detailed understanding of how regional climate and basin landscape conditions independently influence the current hydrology and its climate sensitivity is currently lacking. This study, therefore, compares the climate sensitivity of the hydrology of two basins with contrasted landscape and meteorological characteristics typical of eastern Canada: a forested boreal climate basin (Montmorency) versus an agricultural hemiboreal climate basin (Aca-die). The physically based Cold Regions Hydrological Modelling (CRHM) platform was used to simulate the current and future hydrological processes. Both basin landscape and regional climate drove differences in hy-drological sensitivities to climate change. Projected peak SWE were highly sensitive to warming, particularly for milder baseline climate conditions and moderately influenced by differences in landscape conditions. Landscape conditions mediated a wide range of differing hydrological processes and streamflow responses to climate change. The effective precipitation was more sensitive to warming in the forested basin than in the agricultural one, due to reductions in forest canopy interception losses with warming. Under present climate, precipitation and discharge were found to be more synchronized in the greater relief and slopes of the forested basin, whereas under climate change, they are more synchronized in the agricultural basin due to reduced infiltration and storage capacities. Flow through and over agricultural soils translated the increase in water availability under a warmer and wetter climate into higher peak discharges, whereas the porous forest soils dampened the response of peak discharge to increased available water. These findings help diagnose the mechanisms controlling hy-drological response to climate change in cold regions forested and agricultural basins.

Earth's cryosphere and biosphere are extremely sensitive to climate changes, and transitions in states could alter the carbon emission rate to the atmosphere. However, little is known about the climate sensitivities of frozen soil and vegetation production. Moreover, how does climate heterogeneity control the spatial patterns of such sensitivities, and influence regional vulnerability of both frozen soil and vegetation production? Such questions are critical to be answered. We compiled long-time-series dataset including frozen soil depth (FD), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and temperature and precipitation across Tibetan Plateau to quantify their sensitivities. Results reveal large spatial heterogeneity in FD and NDVI sensitivities. Precipitation alleviated FD sensitivities to warming in the cold northeast zone but accelerated FD sensitivities to precipitation in the warm south and southeast. Meanwhile, the positive warming effect on the NDVI was largely offset by slow increase of precipitation. Areas with high FD decreasing rate were found in northeast, inland, and south and southeast zones. Predominate area across the nine eco-regions are characterized as medium FD decreasing rate, and are synchronized with positive NDVI response in inland and west Himalayas, but negative in northeast and south and southeast. Precipitation restriction on NDVI would be pronounced in moist south and southeast. Our study provides new information that makes a much-needed contribution to advancing our understandings of the effects of global climate change on cryosphere and biosphere, which has important implications for global climate and our ability to predict, and therefore prepare for, future global climatic changes. Our attempt confirms that the method we used could be used to identify climate sensitivity of permafrost based on substantial observation data on active layer dynamics in future.

Quantifying the efficacy of different climate forcings is important for understanding the real-world climate sensitivity. This study presents a systematic multimodel analysis of different climate driver efficacies using simulations from the Precipitation Driver and Response Model Intercomparison Project (PDRMIP). Efficacies calculated from instantaneous radiative forcing deviate considerably from unity across forcing agents and models. Effective radiative forcing (ERF) is a better predictor of global mean near-surface air temperature (GSAT) change. Efficacies are closest to one when ERF is computed using fixed sea surface temperature experiments and adjusted for land surface temperature changes using radiative kernels. Multimodel mean efficacies based on ERF are close to one for global perturbations of methane, sulfate, black carbon, and insolation, but there is notable intermodel spread. We do not find robust evidence that the geographic location of sulfate aerosol affects its efficacy. GSAT is found to respond more slowly to aerosol forcing than CO2 in the early stages of simulations. Despite these differences, we find that there is no evidence for an efficacy effect on historical GSAT trend estimates based on simulations with an impulse response model, nor on the resulting estimates of climate sensitivity derived from the historical period. However, the considerable intermodel spread in the computed efficacies means that we cannot rule out an efficacy-induced bias of +/- 0.4 K in equilibrium climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling when estimated using the historical GSAT trend.

Using idealized climate model simulations, we investigate the effectiveness of black carbon (BC) aerosols in warming the planet relative to CO2 forcing. We find that a 60-fold increase in the BC aerosol mixing ratio from the present-day levels leads to the same equilibrium global mean surface warming (similar to 4.1 K) as for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. However, the radiative forcing is larger (similar to 5.5 Wm(-2)) in the BC case relative to the doubled CO2 case (similar to 3.8 Wm(-2)) for the same surface warming indicating the efficacy (a metric for measuring the effectiveness) of BC aerosols to be less than CO2. The lower efficacy of BC aerosols is related to the differences in the shortwave (SW) cloud feedback: negative in the BC case but positive in the CO2 case. In the BC case, the negative SW cloud feedback is related to an increase in the tropical low clouds which is associated with a northward shift (similar to 7 degrees) of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Further, we show that in the BC case fast precipitation suppression offsets the surface temperature mediated precipitation response and causes similar to 8% net decline in the global mean precipitation. Our study suggests that a feedback between the location of ITCZ and the interhemispheric temperature could exist, and the consequent SW cloud feedback could be contributing to the lower efficacy of BC aerosols. Therefore, an improved representation of low clouds in climate models is likely the key to understand the global climate sensitivity to BC aerosols.

The early twentieth-century warming (EW; 1910-45) and the mid-twentieth-century cooling (MC; 1950-80) have been linked to both internal variability of the climate system and changes in external radiative forcing. The degree to which either of the two factors contributed to EW and MC, or both, is still debated. Using a two-box impulse response model, we demonstrate that multidecadal ocean variability was unlikely to be the driver of observed changes in global mean surface temperature (GMST) after AD 1850. Instead, virtually all (97%-98%) of the global low-frequency variability (>30 years) can be explained by external forcing. We find similarly high percentages of explained variance for interhemispheric and land-ocean temperature evolution. Three key aspects are identified that underpin the conclusion of this new study: inhomogeneous anthropogenic aerosol forcing (AER), biases in the instrumental sea surface temperature (SST) datasets, and inadequate representation of the response to varying forcing factors. Once the spatially heterogeneous nature of AER is accounted for, the MC period is reconcilable with external drivers. SST biases and imprecise forcing responses explain the putative disagreement between models and observations during the EW period. As a consequence, Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) is found to be primarily controlled by external forcing too. Future attribution studies should account for these important factors when discriminating between externally forced and internally generated influences on climate. We argue that AMV must not be used as a regressor and suggest a revised AMV index instead [the North Atlantic Variability Index (NAVI)]. Our associated best estimate for the transient climate response (TCR) is 1.57 K (+/- 0.70 at the 5%-95% confidence level).

Purpose of Review We assess the current understanding of the state and behaviour of aerosols under pre-industrial conditions and the importance for climate. Recent Findings Studies show that the magnitude of anthropogenic aerosol radiative forcing over the industrial period calculated by climate models is strongly affected by the abundance and properties of aerosols in the pre-industrial atmosphere. The low concentration of aerosol particles under relatively pristine conditions means that global mean cloud albedo may have been twice as sensitive to changes in natural aerosol emissions under preindustrial conditions compared to present-day conditions. Consequently, the discovery of new aerosol formation processes and revisions to aerosol emissions have large effects on simulated historical aerosol radiative forcing. Summary We review what is known about the microphysical, chemical, and radiative properties of aerosols in the pre-industrial atmosphere and the processes that control them. Aerosol properties were controlled by a combination of natural emissions, modification of the natural emissions by human activities such as land-use change, and anthropogenic emissions from biofuel combustion and early industrial processes. Although aerosol concentrations were lower in the pre-industrial atmosphere than today, model simulations show that relatively high aerosol concentrations could have been maintained over continental regions due to biogenically controlled new particle formation and wildfires. Despite the importance of preindustrial aerosols for historical climate change, the relevant processes and emissions are given relatively little consideration in climate models, and there have been very few attempts to evaluate them. Consequently, we have very low confidence in the ability of models to simulate the aerosol conditions that form the baseline for historical climate simulations. Nevertheless, it is clear that the 1850s should be regarded as an early industrial reference period, and the aerosol forcing calculated from this period is smaller than the forcing since 1750. Improvements in historical reconstructions of natural and early anthropogenic emissions, exploitation of new Earth system models, and a deeper understanding and evaluation of the controlling processes are key aspects to reducing uncertainties in future.

The impacts of absorbing aerosols on global climate are not completely understood. This paper presents the results of idealized experiments conducted with the Community Atmosphere Model, version 4 (CAM4), coupled to a slab ocean model (CAM4-SOM) to simulate the climate response to increases in tropospheric black carbon aerosols (BC) by direct and semidirect effects. CAM4-SOM was forced with 0, 1x, 2x, 5x, and 10x an estimate of the present day concentration of BC while maintaining the estimated present day global spatial and vertical distribution. The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiative forcing of BC in these experiments is positive (warming) and increases linearly as the BC burden increases. The total semidirect effect for the 1 x BC experiment is positive but becomes increasingly negative for higher BC concentrations. The global-average surface temperature response is found to be a linear function of the TOA radiative forcing. The climate sensitivity to BC from these experiments is estimated to be 0.42 K W-1 m(2) when the semidirect effects are accounted for and 0.22 K W-1 m(2) with only the direct effects considered. Global-average precipitation decreases linearly as BC increases, with a precipitation sensitivity to atmospheric absorption of 0.4% W-1 m(2). The hemispheric asymmetry of BC also causes an increase in southward cross-equatorial heat transport and a resulting northward shift of the intertropical convergence zone in the simulations at a rate of 4 degrees PW-1. Global-average mid- and high-level clouds decrease, whereas the low-level clouds increase linearly with BC. The increase in marine stratocumulus cloud fraction over the southern tropical Atlantic is caused by increased BC-induced diabatic heating of the free troposphere.

Relations among observed changes in global mean surface temperature, ocean heat content, ocean heating rate, and calculated radiative forcing, all as a function of time over the twentieth century, that are based on a two-compartment energy balance model, are used to determine key properties of Earth's climate system. The increase in heat content of the world ocean, obtained as the average of several recent compilations, is found to be linearly related to the increase in global temperature over the period 1965-2009; the slope, augmented to account for additional heat sinks, which is an effective heat capacity of the climate system, is 21.8 +/- A 2.1 W year m(-2) K-1 (one sigma), equivalent to the heat capacity of 170 m of seawater (for the entire planet) or 240 m for the world ocean. The rate of planetary heat uptake, determined from the time derivative of ocean heat content, is found to be proportional to the increase in global temperature relative to the beginning of the twentieth century with proportionality coefficient 1.05 +/- A 0.06 W m(-2) K-1. Transient and equilibrium climate sensitivities were evaluated for six published data sets of forcing mainly by incremental greenhouse gases and aerosols over the twentieth century as calculated by radiation transfer models; these forcings ranged from 1.1 to 2.1 W m(-2), spanning much of the range encompassed by the 2007 assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For five of the six forcing data sets, a rather robust linear proportionality obtains between the observed increase in global temperature and the forcing, allowing transient sensitivity to be determined as the slope. Equilibrium sensitivities determined by two methods that account for the rate of planetary heat uptake range from 0.31 +/- 0.02 to 1.32 +/- 0.31 K (W m(-2))(-1) (CO2 doubling temperature 1.16 +/- 0.09-4.9 +/- 1.2 K), more than spanning the IPCC estimated likely uncertainty range, and strongly anticorrelated with the forcing used to determine the sensitivities. Transient sensitivities, relevant to climate change on the multidecadal time scale, are considerably lower, 0.23 +/- 0.01 to 0.51 +/- 0.04 K (W m(-2))(-1). The time constant characterizing the response of the upper ocean compartment of the climate system to perturbations is estimated as about 5 years, in broad agreement with other recent estimates, and much shorter than the time constant for thermal equilibration of the deep ocean, about 500 years.

Black carbon aerosols absorb solar radiation and decrease planetary albedo, and thus can contribute to climate warming. In this paper, the dependence of equilibrium climate response on the altitude of black carbon is explored using an atmospheric general circulation model coupled to a mixed layer ocean model. The simulations model aerosol direct and semi-direct effects, but not indirect effects. Aerosol concentrations are prescribed and not interactive. It is shown that climate response of black carbon is highly dependent on the altitude of the aerosol. As the altitude of black carbon increases, surface temperatures decrease; black carbon near the surface causes surface warming, whereas black carbon near the tropopause and in the stratosphere causes surface cooling. This cooling occurs despite increasing planetary absorption of sunlight (i.e. decreasing planetary albedo). We find that the trend in surface air temperature response versus the altitude of black carbon is consistent with our calculations of radiative forcing after the troposphere, stratosphere, and land surface have undergone rapid adjustment, calculated as regressed'' radiative forcing. The variation in climate response from black carbon at different altitudes occurs largely from different fast climate responses; temperature dependent feedbacks are not statistically distinguishable. Impacts of black carbon at various altitudes on the hydrological cycle are also discussed; black carbon in the lowest atmospheric layer increases precipitation despite reductions in solar radiation reaching the surface, whereas black carbon at higher altitudes decreases precipitation.