Extinction of the northern oceanic deep convection in an ensemble of climate model simulations of the 20th and 21st centuries

TL;DRAbstract

We study the variability and the evolution of oceanic deep convection in the northern North Atlantic and the Nordic Seas from 1850 to 2100 using an ensemble of 12 climate model simulations with EC-Earth. During the historical period, the model shows a realistic localization of the main sites of deep convection, with the Labrador Sea accounting for most of the deep convective mixing in the northern hemisphere. Labrador convection is partly driven by the NAO (correlation of 0.6) and controls part of the variability of the AMOC at the decadal time scale (correlation of 0.6 when convection leads by 3–4 years). Deep convective activity in the Labrador Sea starts to decline and to become shallower in the beginning of the twentieth century. The decline is primarily caused by a decrease of the sensible heat loss to the atmosphere in winter resulting from increasingly warm atmospheric conditions. It occurs stepwise and is mainly the consequence of two severe drops in deep convective activity du

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