Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Clim.
Sec. Predictions and Projections
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fclim.2024.1383337

Strong contribution from sensible heat to global precipitation increase in climate models is not supported by observational based data

Provisionally accepted
Gunnar Myhre Gunnar Myhre *Caroline Jouan Caroline Jouan Camilla W. Stjern Camilla W. Stjern Øivind Hodnebrog Øivind Hodnebrog
  • Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO), Oslo, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    It has previously been shown that trends in sensible heat from climate models have had a substantial contribution to global precipitation changes. We illustrate that this is the case also in the most recent Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). However, we find that over the period since 1980 reanalyses do not support the reduction in sensible heat from the CMIP6 models and rather estimate a global increase in sensible heat which would contribute to a precipitation reduction. Satellite data over a period of two decades over global ocean generally show an opposite sign of the sensible heat trend to the CMIP6 models, similarly to the reanalyses.

    Keywords: Sensible heat, precipitation, CMIP6, Atmospheric radiation budget, Climate models

    Received: 07 Feb 2024; Accepted: 24 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Myhre, Jouan, Stjern and Hodnebrog. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Gunnar Myhre, Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO), Oslo, Norway

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.