Climate models exaggerate greenhouse gas impact on recent interhemispheric temperature patterns and tropical climate

The interhemispheric thermal contrast, defined as the mean sea surface temperature difference between the northern and southern hemispheres, crucially influences tropical climate. Climate models show a positive interhemispheric thermal contrast trend since 1950, with more warming in the northern hemisphere compared to the southern hemisphere, contradicting the observed negative trend. Here we show this discrepancy stems from models overestimating greenhouse gas responses via wind-evaporation-sea surface temperature feedback, while anthropogenic and natural aerosols combine to produce the negative trend in observations. Consequently, models with high equilibrium climate sensitivity exhibit larger discrepancies with observations. Despite model failure to reproduce the trend, the modeled multidecadal interhemispheric thermal contrast variability aligns with observations, enabling a constrained estimate of effective radiative forcing due to aerosol-cloud interactions of $$-0.6\pm 0.3{W}/{m}^{2}$$, with a “likely” range 57% narrower than the latest IPCC report. Our study further suggests that future northward shifts of the tropical rain belt are likely to be less pronounced than predicted by climate models with high equilibrium climate sensitivity. Climate models overestimate greenhouse gas effects on the temperature difference between Earth’s hemispheres, with this bias strongest in high climate sensitivity models, suggesting future tropical rainfall shifts may be less severe than projected.