Comments on “The Relationship between Land–Ocean Surface Temperature Contrast and Radiative Forcing”

Abstract

n a recent article, Dommenget discussed the role of sea surface temperature variability for continental climate variability and change. Lambert et al. comment on Dommenget?s article in their article several times, arguing that the sensitivity experiment in Dommenget, in which the SST response to surface land temperature changes are discussed, is inconsistent with their and other previously published studies. In this comment, the results of Dommenget?s sensitivity experiments are discussed in more detail and the experiments are extended for longer response times. It is shown that the discussion of how the oceans? response to land forcing is time-scale dependent, with a very weak response to land forcing on interannual time scales, as discussed in Dommenget, and that it has about a twice as strong of a near-equilibrium response to land forcing on time scales longer than 100 yr. The asymmetric land?sea interaction, with the ocean forcing the land much more strongly than the land forces the oceans, as discussed in Dommenget, is confirmed by this study.