Abstract

The seasonal cycle of SST observed in the eastern equatorial Pacific is poorly simulated by many ocean–atmosphere coupled GCMs. This deficiency may be partly due to an incorrect prediction of tropical marine stratocumulus (MSc). To explore this hypothesis, two basic multiyear simulations have been performed using a coupled GCM with seasonally varying solar radiation. The model’s cloud prediction scheme, which underpredicts tropical marine stratocumulus, is used for all clouds in the control run. In contrast, in the “ISCCP” run, the climatological monthly mean low cloud fraction is specified over the open ocean, utilizing C2 data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP). In this manner, the treatment of MSc clouds, including the annual cycle, is more realistic than in previous sensitivity studies.

Robust surface and subsurface thermodynamical and dynamical responses to the specified MSc are found in the Tropics, especially near the equator. In the annual mean, the equatorial cold tongue extends farther west and intensifies, while the east–west SST gradient is enhanced. A double SST maximum flanking the cold tongue becomes asymmetric about the equator. The SST annual cycle in the eastern equatorial Pacific strengthens, and the equatorial SST seasonal anomalies migrate farther westward. MSc-induced local shortwave radiative cooling enhances dynamical cooling associated with the southeast trades. The surface meridional wind stress in the extreme eastern equatorial Pacific remains southerly all year, while the surface zonal wind stress and equatorial upwelling intensify, as does the seasonal cycle of evaporation, in better agreement with observation. Within the ocean, the thermocline steepens and the Equatorial Undercurrent intensifies. When the low clouds are entirely removed, the SST warms by about 5.5 K in the western and central tropical Pacific, relative to “ISCCP,” and the model’s SST bias there reverses sign.

ENSO-like interannual variability with a characteristic timescale of 3–5 yr is found in all simulations, though its amplitude varies. The “ISCCP” equatorial cold tongue inhibits the eastward progression of ENSO-like warm events east of the date line. When the specified low cloud fraction in “ISCCP” is reduced by 20%, the interannual variability amplifies somewhat and the coupled model responds more like a delayed oscillator. The apparent sensitivity in the equatorial Pacific to a 20% relative change in low cloud fraction may have some cautionary implications for seasonal prediction by coupled GCMs.

Abstract

Version 1 of the Community Earth System Model, in the configuration where its full carbon cycle is enabled, is introduced and documented. In this configuration, the terrestrial biogeochemical model, which includes carbon–nitrogen dynamics and is present in earlier model versions, is coupled to an ocean biogeochemical model and atmospheric CO₂ tracers. The authors provide a description of the model, detail how preindustrial-control and twentieth-century experiments were initialized and forced, and examine the behavior of the carbon cycle in those experiments. They examine how sea- and land-to-air CO₂ fluxes contribute to the increase of atmospheric CO₂ in the twentieth century, analyze how atmospheric CO₂ and its surface fluxes vary on interannual time scales, including how they respond to ENSO, and describe the seasonal cycle of atmospheric CO₂ and its surface fluxes. While the model broadly reproduces observed aspects of the carbon cycle, there are several notable biases, including having too large of an increase in atmospheric CO₂ over the twentieth century and too small of a seasonal cycle of atmospheric CO₂ in the Northern Hemisphere. The biases are related to a weak response of the carbon cycle to climatic variations on interannual and seasonal time scales and to twentieth-century anthropogenic forcings, including rising CO₂, land-use change, and atmospheric deposition of nitrogen.

Abstract

The Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3) has recently been developed and released to the climate community. CCSM3 is a coupled climate model with components representing the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and land surface connected by a flux coupler. CCSM3 is designed to produce realistic simulations over a wide range of spatial resolutions, enabling inexpensive simulations lasting several millennia or detailed studies of continental-scale dynamics, variability, and climate change. This paper will show results from the configuration used for climate-change simulations with a T85 grid for the atmosphere and land and a grid with approximately 1° resolution for the ocean and sea ice. The new system incorporates several significant improvements in the physical parameterizations. The enhancements in the model physics are designed to reduce or eliminate several systematic biases in the mean climate produced by previous editions of CCSM. These include new treatments of cloud processes, aerosol radiative forcing, land–atmosphere fluxes, ocean mixed layer processes, and sea ice dynamics. There are significant improvements in the sea ice thickness, polar radiation budgets, tropical sea surface temperatures, and cloud radiative effects. CCSM3 can produce stable climate simulations of millennial duration without ad hoc adjustments to the fluxes exchanged among the component models. Nonetheless, there are still systematic biases in the ocean–atmosphere fluxes in coastal regions west of continents, the spectrum of ENSO variability, the spatial distribution of precipitation in the tropical oceans, and continental precipitation and surface air temperatures. Work is under way to extend CCSM to a more accurate and comprehensive model of the earth's climate system.

Abstract

The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) has developed a coupled general circulation model (CM3) for the atmosphere, oceans, land, and sea ice. The goal of CM3 is to address emerging issues in climate change, including aerosol–cloud interactions, chemistry–climate interactions, and coupling between the troposphere and stratosphere. The model is also designed to serve as the physical system component of earth system models and models for decadal prediction in the near-term future—for example, through improved simulations in tropical land precipitation relative to earlier-generation GFDL models. This paper describes the dynamical core, physical parameterizations, and basic simulation characteristics of the atmospheric component (AM3) of this model. Relative to GFDL AM2, AM3 includes new treatments of deep and shallow cumulus convection, cloud droplet activation by aerosols, subgrid variability of stratiform vertical velocities for droplet activation, and atmospheric chemistry driven by emissions with advective, convective, and turbulent transport. AM3 employs a cubed-sphere implementation of a finite-volume dynamical core and is coupled to LM3, a new land model with ecosystem dynamics and hydrology. Its horizontal resolution is approximately 200 km, and its vertical resolution ranges approximately from 70 m near the earth’s surface to 1 to 1.5 km near the tropopause and 3 to 4 km in much of the stratosphere. Most basic circulation features in AM3 are simulated as realistically, or more so, as in AM2. In particular, dry biases have been reduced over South America. In coupled mode, the simulation of Arctic sea ice concentration has improved. AM3 aerosol optical depths, scattering properties, and surface clear-sky downward shortwave radiation are more realistic than in AM2. The simulation of marine stratocumulus decks remains problematic, as in AM2. The most intense 0.2% of precipitation rates occur less frequently in AM3 than observed. The last two decades of the twentieth century warm in CM3 by 0.32°C relative to 1881–1920. The Climate Research Unit (CRU) and Goddard Institute for Space Studies analyses of observations show warming of 0.56° and 0.52°C, respectively, over this period. CM3 includes anthropogenic cooling by aerosol–cloud interactions, and its warming by the late twentieth century is somewhat less realistic than in CM2.1, which warmed 0.66°C but did not include aerosol–cloud interactions. The improved simulation of the direct aerosol effect (apparent in surface clear-sky downward radiation) in CM3 evidently acts in concert with its simulation of cloud–aerosol interactions to limit greenhouse gas warming.