The North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre Response to 20th Century Anthropogenic Aerosols Emissions.

Abstract: Aerosols play a significant role in the Earth's radiation budget and the emissions of that fraction originating from human activity (anthropogenic aerosols), increased significantly over the 20th century.
Here we examine how the subpolar gyre in the North Atlantic Ocean responded to these 20th century changes in anthoprogenic aerosol emissions. We use a novel experimental ensemble of climate simulations (the SMURPHS ensemble) consisting of a single GCM (HadGEM3) driven with with set of different estimates of historical Anthropogenic Aerosol emissions.
Here we show that anthropogenic aerosols, whilst cooling on the global scale, drive a warming and salinification of the subpolar gyre, together with an increased AMOC. We describe the structure of this response, and comment on the comparison with the observed evolution of the subpolar gyre.

Biography: Dan Hodson is a research scientist at NCAS, based at the University of Reading. His research interests include North Atlantic ocean and climate interactions, AMOC  and subpolar gyre variability, and North Atlantic predictability.