Expansion of the Hadley cell under global warming

2007/03/01 by Jian Lu, Gabriel A. Vecchi, Thomas Reichler · 10 citations
Environmental Science · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Climate variability and models #Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations #Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics

paper · doi:10.1029/2006gl028443

openalex publication_date 2007/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

A consistent weakening and poleward expansion of the Hadley circulation is diagnosed in the climate change simulations of the IPCC AR4 project. Associated with this widening is a poleward expansion of the subtropical dry zone. Simple scaling analysis supports the notion that the poleward extent of the Hadley cell is set by the location where the thermally driven jet first becomes baroclinically unstable. The expansion of the Hadley cell is caused by an increase in the subtropical static stability, which pushes poleward the baroclinic instability zone and hence the outer boundary of the Hadley cell.

Citations

• The General Circulation of the Atmosphere

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