Editorial Type:
Article
Article Type:
Research Article

An Energy Conservation Analysis of Ocean Drift in the CMIP5 Global Coupled Models

Will Hobbs ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, IMAS, and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

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Matthew D. Palmer Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, United Kingdom

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Didier Monselesan CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

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Print Publication:
01 Mar 2016
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0477.1
Page(s):
1639–1653
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Abstract

Climate model simulations of changes to Earth’s energy budget are fundamental to improve understanding of both historical and future climate change. However, coupled models are prone to “drift” (i.e., they contain spurious unforced trends in state variables) due to incomplete spinup or nonclosure of the energy budget. This work assesses the globally integrated energy budgets of 25 models in phase 5 of CMIP (CMIP5). It is shown that for many of the models there is a significant disagreement between ocean heat content changes and net top-of-atmosphere radiation. The disagreement is largely time-constant and independent of forcing scenario. Furthermore, most of the nonconservation seems to occur as a result of energy leaks external to the ocean model realm. After drift correction, the time-varying energy budget is consistent at decadal time scales, and model responses to climate forcing are not sensitive to the magnitude of their drift. This demonstrates that, although drift terms can be significant, model output can be corrected post hoc without biasing results.

Supplemental information related to this paper is available at the Journals Online website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0477.s1.

Corresponding author address: Will Hobbs, ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, IMAS, Private Bag 129, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia. E-mail: whobbs@utas.edu.au

Abstract

Climate model simulations of changes to Earth’s energy budget are fundamental to improve understanding of both historical and future climate change. However, coupled models are prone to “drift” (i.e., they contain spurious unforced trends in state variables) due to incomplete spinup or nonclosure of the energy budget. This work assesses the globally integrated energy budgets of 25 models in phase 5 of CMIP (CMIP5). It is shown that for many of the models there is a significant disagreement between ocean heat content changes and net top-of-atmosphere radiation. The disagreement is largely time-constant and independent of forcing scenario. Furthermore, most of the nonconservation seems to occur as a result of energy leaks external to the ocean model realm. After drift correction, the time-varying energy budget is consistent at decadal time scales, and model responses to climate forcing are not sensitive to the magnitude of their drift. This demonstrates that, although drift terms can be significant, model output can be corrected post hoc without biasing results.

Supplemental information related to this paper is available at the Journals Online website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0477.s1.

Corresponding author address: Will Hobbs, ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, IMAS, Private Bag 129, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia. E-mail: whobbs@utas.edu.au

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