scholarly journals Sensitivity of Pliocene climate simulations in MRI-CGCM2.3 to respective boundary conditions

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 1619-1634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youichi Kamae ◽  
Kohei Yoshida ◽  
Hiroaki Ueda

Abstract. Accumulations of global proxy data are essential steps for improving reliability of climate model simulations for the Pliocene warming climate. In the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project phase 2 (PlioMIP2), a part project of the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project phase 4, boundary forcing data have been updated from the PlioMIP phase 1 due to recent advances in understanding of oceanic, terrestrial and cryospheric aspects of the Pliocene palaeoenvironment. In this study, sensitivities of Pliocene climate simulations to the newly archived boundary conditions are evaluated by a set of simulations using an atmosphere–ocean coupled general circulation model, MRI-CGCM2.3. The simulated Pliocene climate is warmer than pre-industrial conditions for 2.4 °C in global mean, corresponding to 0.6 °C warmer than the PlioMIP1 simulation by the identical climate model. Revised orography, lakes, and shrunk ice sheets compared with the PlioMIP1 lead to local and remote influences including snow and sea ice albedo feedback, and poleward heat transport due to the atmosphere and ocean that result in additional warming over middle and high latitudes. The amplified higher-latitude warming is supported qualitatively by the proxy evidences, but is still underestimated quantitatively. Physical processes responsible for the global and regional climate changes should be further addressed in future studies under systematic intermodel and data–model comparison frameworks.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youichi Kamae ◽  
Kohei Yoshida ◽  
Hiroaki Ueda

Abstract. Accumulations of global proxy data are essential steps for improving reliability of climate model simulations for the Pliocene warming climate. In the Pliocene Model Intercomprison Project phase 2 (PlioMIP2), boundary forcing data have been updated from phase 1 due to recent advances in understanding of oceanic, terrestrial and cryospheric aspects of the Pliocene paleoenvironment. In this study, sensitivities of Pliocene climate simulations to the newly archived boundary conditions are evaluated by a set of simulations using an atmosphere-ocean coupled general circulation model, MRI-CGCM2.3. The simulated Pliocene climate is warmer than pre-industrial condition for 2.4 K in global mean, corresponding to 0.6 K warmer than the PlioMIP1 simulation by the identical climate model. Revised orography, lakes and shrunk ice sheets compared with the PlioMIP1 lead to local and remote influences including snow and sea ice albedo feedback, and poleward heat transport due to the atmosphere and ocean that result in additional warming over middle and high latitudes. The amplified higher-latitude warming is supported qualitatively by the proxy evidences, but is still underestimated quantitatively. Physical processes responsible for the global and regional climate changes should be further addressed in future studies under systematic intermodel and data-model comparison frameworks.


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 3175-3207 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Pound ◽  
J. Tindall ◽  
S. J. Pickering ◽  
A. M. Haywood ◽  
H. J. Dowsett ◽  
...  

Abstract. Based on a synthesis of geological data we have reconstructed the global distribution of Late Pliocene soils and lakes which are then used as boundary conditions in a series of model experiments using the Hadley Centre General Circulation Model (HadCM3) and the BIOME4 mechanistic vegetation model. By combining our novel soil and lake reconstructions with a fully coupled climate model we are able to explore the feedbacks of soils and lakes on the climate of the Late Pliocene. Our experiments reveal regionally confined changes of local climate and vegetation in response to the new boundary conditions. The addition of Late Pliocene soils has the largest influence on surface air temperatures, with notable increases in Australia, southern North Africa and Asia. The inclusion of Late Pliocene lakes generates a significant increase in precipitation in central Africa, as well as seasonal increases in the Northern Hemisphere. When combined, the feedbacks on climate from Late Pliocene lakes and soils improve the data to model fit in western North America and southern North Africa.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 3047-3065
Author(s):  
R. S. Smith

Abstract. FAMOUS is an ocean-atmosphere general circulation model of low resolution, based on version 4.5 of the UK MetOffice Unified Model. Here we update the model description to account for changes in the model as it is used in the CMIP5 EMIC model intercomparison project (EMICmip) and a number of other studies. Most of these changes correct errors found in the code. The EMICmip version of the model (XFXWB) has a better-conserved water budget and additional cooling in some high latitude areas, but otherwise has a similar climatology to previous versions of FAMOUS. A variant of XFXWB is also described, with changes to the dynamics at the top of the model which improve the model climatology (XFHCC).


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1543
Author(s):  
Reinhardt Pinzón ◽  
Noriko N. Ishizaki ◽  
Hidetaka Sasaki ◽  
Tosiyuki Nakaegawa

To simulate the current climate, a 20-year integration of a non-hydrostatic regional climate model (NHRCM) with grid spacing of 5 and 2 km (NHRCM05 and NHRCM02, respectively) was nested within the AGCM. The three models did a similarly good job of simulating surface air temperature, and the spatial horizontal resolution did not affect these statistics. NHRCM02 did a good job of reproducing seasonal variations in surface air temperature. NHRCM05 overestimated annual mean precipitation in the western part of Panama and eastern part of the Pacific Ocean. NHRCM05 is responsible for this overestimation because it is not seen in MRI-AGCM. NHRCM02 simulated annual mean precipitation better than NHRCM05, probably due to a convection-permitting model without a convection scheme, such as the Kain and Fritsch scheme. Therefore, the finer horizontal resolution of NHRCM02 did a better job of replicating the current climatological mean geographical distributions and seasonal changes of surface air temperature and precipitation.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Smith ◽  
J. M. Gregory ◽  
A. Osprey

Abstract. FAMOUS is an ocean-atmosphere general circulation model of low resolution, capable of simulating approximately 120 years of model climate per wallclock day using current high performance computing facilities. It uses most of the same code as HadCM3, a widely used climate model of higher resolution and computational cost, and has been tuned to reproduce the same climate reasonably well. FAMOUS is useful for climate simulations where the computational cost makes the application of HadCM3 unfeasible, either because of the length of simulation or the size of the ensemble desired. We document a number of scientific and technical improvements to the original version of FAMOUS. These improvements include changes to the parameterisations of ozone and sea-ice which alleviate a significant cold bias from high northern latitudes and the upper troposphere, and the elimination of volume-averaged drifts in ocean tracers. A simple model of the marine carbon cycle has also been included. A particular goal of FAMOUS is to conduct millennial-scale paleoclimate simulations of Quaternary ice ages; to this end, a number of useful changes to the model infrastructure have been made.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 717-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Jöckel ◽  
A. Kerkweg ◽  
A. Pozzer ◽  
R. Sander ◽  
H. Tost ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Modular Earth Submodel System (MESSy) is an open, multi-institutional project providing a strategy for developing comprehensive Earth System Models (ESMs) with highly flexible complexity. The first version of the MESSy infrastructure and process submodels, mainly focusing on atmospheric chemistry, has been successfully coupled to an atmospheric General Circulation Model (GCM) expanding it into an Atmospheric Chemistry GCM (AC-GCM) for nudged simulations and into a Chemistry Climate Model (CCM) for climate simulations. Here, we present the second development cycle of MESSy, which comprises (1) an improved and extended infrastructure for the basemodel independent coupling of process-submodels, (2) new, highly valuable diagnostic capabilities for the evaluation with observational data and (3) an improved atmospheric chemistry setup. With the infrastructural changes, we place the headstone for further model extensions from a CCM towards a comprehensive ESM. The new diagnostic submodels will be used for regular re-evaluations of the continuously further developing model system. The updates of the chemistry setup are briefly evaluated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1685-1699
Author(s):  
Marcus Breil ◽  
Emanuel Christner ◽  
Alexandre Cauquoin ◽  
Martin Werner ◽  
Melanie Karremann ◽  
...  

Abstract. In order to investigate the impact of spatial resolution on the discrepancy between simulated δ18O and observed δ18O in Greenland ice cores, regional climate simulations are performed with the isotope-enabled regional climate model (RCM) COSMO_iso. For this purpose, isotope-enabled general circulation model (GCM) simulations with the ECHAM5-wiso general circulation model (GCM) under present-day conditions and the MPI-ESM-wiso GCM under mid-Holocene conditions are dynamically downscaled with COSMO_iso for the Arctic region. The capability of COSMO_iso to reproduce observed isotopic ratios in Greenland ice cores for these two periods is investigated by comparing the simulation results to measured δ18O ratios from snow pit samples, Global Network of Isotopes in Precipitation (GNIP) stations and ice cores. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a mid-Holocene isotope-enabled RCM simulation is performed for the Arctic region. Under present-day conditions, a dynamical downscaling of ECHAM5-wiso (1.1∘×1.1∘) with COSMO_iso to a spatial resolution of 50 km improves the agreement with the measured δ18O ratios for 14 of 19 observational data sets. A further increase in the spatial resolution to 7 km does not yield substantial improvements except for the coastal areas with its complex terrain. For the mid-Holocene, a fully coupled MPI-ESM-wiso time slice simulation is downscaled with COSMO_iso to a spatial resolution of 50 km. In the mid-Holocene, MPI-ESM-wiso already agrees well with observations in Greenland and a downscaling with COSMO_iso does not further improve the model–data agreement. Despite this lack of improvement in model biases, the study shows that in both periods, observed δ18O values at measurement sites constitute isotope ratios which are mainly within the subgrid-scale variability of the global ECHAM5-wiso and MPI-ESM-wiso simulation results. The correct δ18O ratios are consequently not resolved in the GCM simulation results and need to be extracted by a refinement with an RCM. In this context, the RCM simulations provide a spatial δ18O distribution by which the effects of local uncertainties can be taken into account in the comparison between point measurements and model outputs. Thus, an isotope-enabled GCM–RCM model chain with realistically implemented fractionating processes constitutes a useful supplement to reconstruct regional paleo-climate conditions during the mid-Holocene in Greenland. Such model chains might also be applied to reveal the full potential of GCMs in other regions and climate periods, in which large deviations relative to observed isotope ratios are simulated.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wing-Le Chan ◽  
Ayako Abe-Ouchi

Abstract. The second phase of the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP2) has attracted many climate modelling groups in its continuing efforts to better understand the climate of the mid-Piacenzian warm period (mPWP) when atmospheric CO2 was last closest to present day levels. Like the first phase, PlioMIP1, it is an internationally coordinated initiative that allows for a systematic comparison of various models in a similar manner to PMIP. Model intercomparison and model-data comparison now focus specifically on the interglacial at marine isotope stage KM5c (3.205 Ma) and experimental design is not only based on new boundary conditions but includes various sensitivity experiments. In this study, we present results from long-term model integrations using the MIROC4m atmosphere-ocean coupled general circulation model, developed at the institutes CCSR/NIES/FRCGC in Japan. The core experiment, with CO2 levels set to 400 ppm, shows a warming of 3.1 °C compared to the Pre-Industrial, with two-thirds of the warming being contributed by the increase in CO2. Although this level of warming is less than that in the equivalent PlioMIP1 experiment, there is a slightly better agreement with proxy sea surface temperature (SST) data at PRISM3 locations, especially in the northern North Atlantic where there were large model-data discrepancies in PlioMIP1. Similar changes in precipitation and sea ice are seen and the Arctic remains ice-free in the summer. However, unlike PlioMIP1, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is now stronger than that of the Pre-Industrial, even though increasing CO2 tends to weaken it. This stronger AMOC is a consequence of a closed Bering Strait in the PlioMIP2 paleogeography. Also, when present day boundary conditions are replaced by those of the Pliocene, the dependency of the AMOC strength on CO2 is significantly weakened. Sensitivity tests show that lower values of CO2 give a global SST which is overall more consistent with the PRISM3 SST field presented in PlioMIP1. Inclusion of dynamical vegetation and the effects of all realistic orbital configurations should be considered in future experiments using MIROC4m for the mPWP.


2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 561-575 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Vellinga ◽  
Peili Wu

Abstract The Third Hadley Centre Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere General Circulation Model (HadCM3) is used to analyze the relation between northward energy transports in the ocean and atmosphere at centennial time scales. In a transient water-hosing experiment, where suppressing the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) causes a reduction in northward ocean heat transport of up to 0.75 PW (i.e., 75%), the atmosphere compensates by increasing its northward transport of moist static energy. This compensation is very efficient at low latitudes and near complete at the equator throughout the experiment, but is incomplete farther north across the northern midlatitude storm tracks. The change in atmosphere energy transport enables the model to find a new global-mean radiative equilibrium after 240 yr. In a perturbed physics ensemble of HadCM3 it was found that time-averaged meridional energy transports in ocean and atmosphere can act opposingly. Where model formulation causes an unbalanced mean climate state, for example, an excessive top-of-the-atmosphere radiative surplus at low latitudes, the atmosphere increases its poleward energy transport to disperse this excess. MOC and ocean poleward heat transport tend to be reduced in such model versions, and this offsets the increased poleward atmospheric transport of the low-latitude energy surplus. Model versions that are close to net radiative equilibrium also have ocean heat transport and MOC close to observed values.


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