scholarly journals A Comparison of Two Dust Uplift Schemes within the Same General Circulation Model

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Ackerley ◽  
Manoj M. Joshi ◽  
Eleanor J. Highwood ◽  
Claire L. Ryder ◽  
Mark A. J. Harrison ◽  
...  

Aeolian dust modelling has improved significantly over the last ten years and many institutions now consistently model dust uplift, transport and deposition in general circulation models (GCMs). However, the representation of dust in GCMs is highly variable between modelling communities due to differences in the uplift schemes employed and the representation of the global circulation that subsequently leads to dust deflation. In this study two different uplift schemes are incorporated in the same GCM. This approach enables a clearer comparison of the dust uplift schemes themselves, without the added complexity of several different transport and deposition models. The global annual mean dust aerosol optical depths (at 550 nm) using two different dust uplift schemes were found to be 0.014 and 0.023—both lying within the estimates from the AeroCom project. However, the models also have appreciably different representations of the dust size distribution adjacent to the West African coast and very different deposition at various sites throughout the globe. The different dust uplift schemes were also capable of influencing the modelled circulation, surface air temperature, and precipitation despite the use of prescribed sea surface temperatures. This has important implications for the use of dust models in AMIP-style (Atmospheric Modelling Intercomparison Project) simulations and Earth-system modelling.

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.


Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Najeebullah Khan ◽  
Shamsuddin Shahid ◽  
Kamal Ahmed ◽  
Tarmizi Ismail ◽  
Nadeem Nawaz ◽  
...  

The performance of general circulation models (GCMs) in a region are generally assessed according to their capability to simulate historical temperature and precipitation of the region. The performance of 31 GCMs of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) is evaluated in this study to identify a suitable ensemble for daily maximum, minimum temperature and precipitation for Pakistan using multiple sets of gridded data, namely: Asian Precipitation–Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation (APHRODITE), Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST), Princeton Global Meteorological Forcing (PGF) and Climate Prediction Centre (CPC) data. An entropy-based robust feature selection approach known as symmetrical uncertainty (SU) is used for the ranking of GCM. It is known from the results of this study that the spatial distribution of best-ranked GCMs varies for different sets of gridded data. The performance of GCMs is also found to vary for both temperatures and precipitation. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia (CSIRO)-Mk3-6-0 and Max Planck Institute (MPI)-ESM-LR perform well for temperature while EC-Earth and MIROC5 perform well for precipitation. A trade-off is formulated to select the common GCMs for different climatic variables and gridded data sets, which identify six GCMs, namely: ACCESS1-3, CESM1-BGC, CMCC-CM, HadGEM2-CC, HadGEM2-ES and MIROC5 for the reliable projection of temperature and precipitation of Pakistan.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ning Tan ◽  
Camille Contoux ◽  
Gilles Ramstein ◽  
Yong Sun ◽  
Christophe Dumas ◽  
...  

<p>The mid-Piacenzian warm period (3.264 to 3.025 Ma) is the most recent geological period with present-like atmospheric pCO<sub>2</sub>. A specific interglacial (Marine Isotope Stage KM5c, MIS KM5c; 3.205 Ma) has been selected for the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project phase 2 (PlioMIP 2). We carried out a series of experiments according to the design of PlioMIP2 with two versions of IPSL atmosphere–ocean coupled general circulation model (AOGCM): IPSL-CM5A and IPSL-CM5A2. Our results show that the simulated MIS KM5c climate presents enhanced warming at mid- to high latitudes when compared to the PlioMIP 1, resulting from the enhanced Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation caused by the high-latitude seaway changes. The sensitivity experiments, conducted with IPSL- CM5A2, show that, apart from the pCO2,  both modified orography and reduced ice sheets contribute substantially to mid- to high latitude warming in MIS KM5c. When considering the pCO2 uncertainties (+/−50 ppmv) during the Pliocene, the response of the modeled mean annual surface air temperature to changes to pCO<sub>2</sub> (+/−50 ppmv) is not symmetric, which is likely due to the nonlinear response of the cryosphere (snow cover and sea ice extent).</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 1223-1249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yating Lin ◽  
Gilles Ramstein ◽  
Haibin Wu ◽  
Raj Rani ◽  
Pascale Braconnot ◽  
...  

Abstract. The mid-Holocene period (MH) has long been an ideal target for the validation of general circulation model (GCM) results against reconstructions gathered in global datasets. These studies aim to test GCM sensitivity, mainly to seasonal changes induced by the orbital parameters (longitude of the perihelion). Despite widespread agreement between model results and data on the MH climate, some important differences still exist. There is no consensus on the continental size (the area of the temperature anomaly) of the MH thermal climate response, which makes regional quantitative reconstruction critical to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the MH climate patterns. Here, we compare the annual and seasonal outputs from the most recent Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (PMIP3) models with an updated synthesis of climate reconstruction over China, including, for the first time, a seasonal cycle of temperature and precipitation. Our results indicate that the main discrepancies between model and data for the MH climate are the annual and winter mean temperature. A warmer-than-present climate condition is derived from pollen data for both annual mean temperature (∼0.7 K on average) and winter mean temperature (∼1 K on average), while most of the models provide both colder-than-present annual and winter mean temperature and a relatively warmer summer, showing a linear response driven by the seasonal forcing. By conducting simulations in BIOME4 and CESM, we show that surface processes are the key factors creating the uncertainties between models and data. These results pinpoint the crucial importance of including the non-linear responses of the surface water and energy balance to vegetation changes.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1301-1337 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Ackerley ◽  
A. Lorrey ◽  
J. A. Renwick ◽  
S. J. Phipps ◽  
S. Wagner ◽  
...  

Abstract. Diagnosing the climate of New Zealand from low-resolution General Circulation Models (GCMs) is notoriously difficult due to the interaction of the complex topography and the Southern Hemisphere (SH) mid-latitude westerly winds. Therefore, methods of downscaling synoptic scale model data for New Zealand are useful to help understand past climate. New Zealand also has a wealth of palaeoclimate-proxy data to which the downscaled model output can be compared, and to provide a qualitative method of assessing the capability of GCMs to represent, in this case, the climate 6000 years ago in the Mid-Holocene. In this paper, a synoptic weather and climate regime classification system using Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis of GCM and reanalysis data, was used. The climate regimes are associated with surface air temperature and precipitation anomalies over New Zealand. From the analysis in this study, we find that increased trough activity in summer and autumn led to increased precipitation, with an increased north-south pressure gradient ("zonal events") in winter and spring leading to drier conditions. Opposing effects of increased (decreased) temperature are also seen in spring (autumn) in the South Island, which are associated with the increased zonal (trough) events. Evidence from the palaeoclimate-proxy data suggests that the Mid-Holocene was characterized by increased westerly wind events in New Zealand, which agrees with the preference for trough and zonal regimes in the models.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (24) ◽  
pp. 15789-15799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas G. MacMartin ◽  
Ben Kravitz

Abstract. Climate emulators trained on existing simulations can be used to project project the climate effects that result from different possible future pathways of anthropogenic forcing, without further relying on general circulation model (GCM) simulations. We extend this idea to include different amounts of solar geoengineering in addition to different pathways of greenhouse gas concentrations, by training emulators from a multi-model ensemble of simulations from the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP). The emulator is trained on the abrupt 4 × CO2 and a compensating solar reduction simulation (G1), and evaluated by comparing predictions against a simulated 1 % per year CO2 increase and a similarly smaller solar reduction (G2). We find reasonable agreement in most models for predicting changes in temperature and precipitation (including regional effects), and annual-mean Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent, with the difference between simulation and prediction typically being smaller than natural variability. This verifies that the linearity assumption used in constructing the emulator is sufficient for these variables over the range of forcing considered. Annual-minimum Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent is less well predicted, indicating a limit to the linearity assumption.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinping Xu ◽  
Shengping He ◽  
Yongqi Gao ◽  
Botao Zhou ◽  
Huijun Wang

AbstractPrevious modelling and observational studies have shown discrepancies in the interannual relationship of winter surface air temperature (SAT) between Arctic and East Asia, stimulating the debate about whether Arctic change can influence midlatitude climate. This study uses two sets of coordinated experiments (EXP1 and EXP2) from six different atmospheric general circulation models. Both EXP1 and EXP2 consist of 130 ensemble members, each of which in EXP1 (EXP2) was forced by the same observed daily varying sea ice and daily varying (daily climatological) sea surface temperature (SST) for 1982–2014 but with different atmospheric initial conditions. Large spread exists among ensemble members in simulating the Arctic–East Asian SAT relationship. Only a fraction of ensemble members can reproduce the observed deep Arctic warming–cold continent pattern which extends from surface to upper troposphere, implying the important role of atmospheric internal variability. The mechanisms of deep Arctic warming and shallow Arctic warming are further distinguished. Arctic warming aloft is caused primarily by poleward moisture transport, which in conjunction with the surface warming coupled with sea ice melting constitutes the surface-amplified deep Arctic warming throughout the troposphere. These processes associated with the deep Arctic warming may be related to the forcing of remote SST when there is favorable atmospheric circulation such as Rossby wave train propagating from the North Atlantic into the Arctic.


2010 ◽  
Vol 67 (6) ◽  
pp. 1983-1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven C. Hardiman ◽  
David G. Andrews ◽  
Andy A. White ◽  
Neal Butchart ◽  
Ian Edmond

Abstract Transformed Eulerian mean (TEM) equations and Eliassen–Palm (EP) flux diagnostics are presented for the general nonhydrostatic, fully compressible, deep atmosphere formulation of the primitive equations in spherical geometric coordinates. The TEM equations are applied to a general circulation model (GCM) based on these general primitive equations. It is demonstrated that a naive application in this model of the widely used approximations to the EP diagnostics, valid for the hydrostatic primitive equations using log-pressure as a vertical coordinate and presented, for example, by Andrews et al. in 1987 can lead to misleading features in these diagnostics. These features can be of the same order of magnitude as the diagnostics themselves throughout the winter stratosphere. Similar conclusions are found to hold for “downward control” calculations. The reasons are traced to the change of vertical coordinate from geometric height to log-pressure. Implications for the modeling community, including comparison of model output with that from reanalysis products available only on pressure surfaces, are discussed.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas G. MacMartin ◽  
Ben Kravitz

Abstract. Climate emulators trained on existing simulations can be used to project the climate effects that would result from different possible future pathways of anthropogenic forcing, without relying on general circulation model (GCM) simulations for every possible pathway. We extend this idea to include different amounts of solar geoengineering in addition to different pathways of green-house gas concentrations by training emulators from a multi-model ensemble of simulations from the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP). The emulator is trained on the abrupt 4 x CO2 and a compensating solar reduction simulation (G1), and evaluated by comparing predictions against a simulated 1 % per year CO2 increase and a similarly smaller solar reduction (G2). We find reasonable agreement in most models for predicting changes in temperature and precipitation (including regional effects), and annual-mean Northern hemisphere sea ice extent, with the difference between simulation and prediction typically smaller than natural variability. This verifies that the linearity assumption used in constructing the emulator is sufficient for these variables over the range of forcing considered. Annual-minimum Northern hemisphere sea ice extent is less-well predicted, indicating the limits of the linearity assumption. For future pathways involving relatively small forcing from solar geoengineering, the errors introduced from nonlinear effects may be smaller than the uncertainty due to natural variability, and the emulator prediction may be a more accurate estimate of the forced component of the models' response than an actual simulation would be.


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