In a new study, Dr. Claudia Timmreck, Dr. Dirk Olonscheck and Dr. Shih-Wei Fang from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, together with colleagues from the University of Edinburgh and ISAC-Lecce, show that seasonal and ensemble mean patterns of near-surface temperature and precipitation anomalies are distinguishable and linearly scalable for sulfur emissions from 10 to 40 Tg sulfur (S) if their forcing pattern is similar.
The northern hemisphere climate during the last glacial period (about 65,000-15,000 years before present) was dominated by two prominent signals of glacial climate variability, known as Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles and Heinrich events. The episodic Heinrich events, defined by an enhanced ice discharge from the Laurentide Ice Sheet, tend to coincide with cold phases of the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, which are periodic and abrupt warming and cooling cycles. This suggests a close connection, but the…
Have you ever wondered how much a single measurement campaign matters when estimating the ocean's carbon sink? In a study published recently in Scientific Reports, Jaqueline Behncke and Peter Landschützer from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology together with Toste Tanhua from GEOMAR show that data from a single sailboat have a significant impact on estimates of the ocean carbon sink. In the South Polar Ocean, where few measurement campaigns take place, CO2 measurements from a single…
When a snowball Earth deglaciates, the planet transitions rapidly into a hot "supergreenhouse" climate that persists for a hundred thousand years or more - according to the classic snowball Earth theory. In a new publication, MPI-M scientists Lennart Ramme, Tatiana Ilyina and Jochem Marotzke show that this concept is too simplified, as the ocean transformations after a snowball Earth drive strong carbon cycle dynamics, which alter the evolution of atmospheric CO2. In fact, scenarios ranging…
Do climate models realistically represent the coupling between Earth’s surface warming and the top-of-the atmosphere radiation? Dirk Olonscheck, research scientist at Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, and Maria Rugenstein, Assistant Professor at Colorado State University, show that models systematically underestimate the observed coupling strength. Thereby, the models accumulate too much energy in the atmosphere, an effect that contributes to a possibly too high climate sensitivity of some…
In their new study Olga Erokhina and Uwe Mikolajewicz showed that adding icebergs to climate models can help scientists better understand the influence melting icebergs have on the planet’s climate. Even though icebergs are an important component of the climate system, they are not included in most models — partly as they are computational quite expensive. Erokhina und Mikolajewicz now found a new approach of including them that doesn't add much to the computational cost of running the climate…
In a recent study, Dr. Junhong Lee and Dr. Cathy Hohenegger show that a next-generation climate model exhibits a different relationship between water stored in the soil and precipitation compared to a state-of-the-art climate model. This finding questions the ability of conventional climate models to answer questions related to climate over land.
In a recent publication, Prof. Jin-Song von Storch together with other scientists showed that the ocean component of the ICON model is able to realistically simulate the major properties of open-ocean tides, also known as barotropic tides or surface tides. This ability is a prerequisite for the ocean component of ICON at kilometer scale to realistically simulate internal tides, which “live” in the ocean interior and are challenging to observe. Internal tides represent a major internal wave…
A group of climate protection fellows from South America, Asia and Africa will be visiting the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and the German Climate Computing Center on March 20 to gain an overview of selected aspects of climate research.
Climate change is melting the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica and causing sea levels to rise. This could be a disaster for
island states and coastal cities. How much the ice sheets shrink also depends on feedback effects between the ice sheets and the climate system. Marie-Luise Kapsch and Clemens Schannwell are studying these effects at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.
In a commentary recently published in AGU Advances, Prof. Bjorn Stevens, Director of the Climate Physics Department of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, shares his perspectives on the future of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, or CMIP.