Which regional cloud-radiative changes are most important for the global warming response of the midlatitude jet streams?

Clouds and the midlatitude circulation are strongly coupled via radiation. Previous studies showed that global cloud-radiative changes contribute significantly to the global warming response of the midlatitude circulation. Here, we investigate the impact of regional cloud-radiative changes and identify which regional cloud-radiative changes are most important for the impact of global cloud-radiative changes. We show how tropical, midlatitude and polar cloud-radiative changes modify the annual-mean, wintertime and summertime jet stream response to global warming across ocean basins. To this end, we perform global simulations with the atmospheric component of the ICOsahedral Nonhydrostatic (ICON) model. We prescribe sea surface temperatures (SST) to isolate the impact of cloud-radiative changes via the atmospheric pathway, i.e. changes in atmospheric cloud-radiative heating, and mimic global warming by a uniform 4K SST increase. We apply the cloud-locking method to break the cloud-radiation-circulation coupling and to decompose the circulation response into contributions from cloud-radiative changes and from the SST increase.

In response to global warming, the North Atlantic, North Pacific, Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere jet streams shift poleward and the North Atlantic, Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere jets strengthen. Global cloud-radiative changes contribute to these jet responses in all ocean basins. In the annual-mean and DJF, tropical and midlatitude cloud-radiative changes contribute significantly to the poleward jet shift in all ocean basins. Polar cloud-radiative changes shift the jet streams poleward in the northern hemispheric ocean basins but equatorward in the Southern Hemisphere. In JJA, the poleward jet shift is small in all ocean basins. In contrast to the jet shift, the global cloud-radiative impacts on the 850hPa zonal wind and jet strength responses result predominantly from tropical cloud-radiative changes.

The cloud-radiative impact on the jet shift can be related to changes in upper-tropospheric baroclinicity via increases in upper-tropospheric meridional temperature gradients, enhanced wave activity and increased eddy momentum fluxes. However, the response of the atmospheric temperature to cloud-radiative heating is more difficult to understand because it is modulated by other small-scale processes such as convection and the circulation. Our results help to understand the jet stream response to global warming and highlight the importance of regional cloud-radiative changes for this response, in particular those in the tropics.