A Simple Moisture Advection Model of Specific Humidity Change over Land in Response to SST Warming

Abstract

Abstract A simple conceptual model of surface specific humidity change over land is described, based on the effect of increased moisture advection from the oceans in response to sea surface temperature (SST) warming. In this model, future q over land is determined by scaling the present-day pattern of land q by the fractional increase in the oceanic moisture source. Simple model estimates agree well with climate model projections of future (mean spatial correlation coefficient 0.87), so over both land and ocean can be viewed primarily as a thermodynamic process controlled by SST warming. Precipitation change is also affected by , and the new simple model can be included in a decomposition of tropical precipitation change, where it provides increased physical understanding of the processes that drive over land. Confidence in the thermodynamic part of extreme precipitation change over land is increased by this improved understanding, and this should scale approximately with Clausius–Clapeyron oceanic q increases under SST warming. Residuals of actual climate model from simple model estimates are often associated with regions of large circulation change, and can be thought of as the “dynamical” part of specific humidity change. The simple model is used to explore intermodel uncertainty in , and there are substantial contributions to uncertainty from both the thermodynamic (simple model) and dynamical (residual) terms. The largest cause of intermodel uncertainty within the thermodynamic term is uncertainty in the magnitude of global mean SST warming.