Investigating physical constraints on climate feedbacks using a perturbed parameter ensemble

A large parameter-perturbed ensemble (PPE) of the Met Office climate model is used to explore the relationship between radiative feedbacks and the present-day simulation of the associated physical processes. We highlight three tropical regimes (deep convection over ocean and land, and marine stratocumulus) in which the same set of processes drives the present-day simulation of clouds and their feedbacks. In each case, the amount of the dominant cloud types reduces in response to warming and the reduction is approximately proportional to the amount simulated in the present day. In deep convective regions, convective process parameters lead the spread among multiple contributing processes, with vegetation processes contributing as well for the land regions. Multiple parameters, such as boundary layer processes, drive stratocumulus regions. However, the low-thick clouds are systematically overestimated, suggesting a structural error in their process representations which would limit the efficacy of the constraint. The influence of convection is largely confined to the tropical deep convective regions in the present day but extends to mid-latitudes under warming. Because of this, contributing processes to the spread in the present-day and the response are different in the extra-tropics, making it much more difficult to establish links between the present-day and the feedback within the region. This suggests that identifying a constraint on convective processes in the tropics for the present-day simulations could constrain both the tropical feedbacks and feedbacks in the extra-tropics. A parameter representing deep-convective entrainment links the present-day tropical mean high cloud and clear-sky longwave flux to their feedbacks in our model, suggesting a potential process constraint from the observations. Understanding and improving the detailed processes controlling feedbacks is ultimately only possible in individual models. Different process-based constraints might be inferred for different models. The approach described here could usefully extended to other single model ensembles and the collective understandings could be valuable for improving model process and feedbacks more generally.