Modeling surface processes in climate system models

There is ample evidence from palaeobotanic and palaeoclimatic reconstructions that during early and mid-Holocene between some 11,700 years (in some regions, a few thousand years earlier) and some 4200 years ago, subtropical North Africa was much more humid and greener than today. This African Humid Period (AHP) was triggered by changes in the orbital forcing, with the climatic precession as the dominant pacemaker. Climate system modeling in the 1990s revealed that orbital forcing alone cannot explain the large changes in the North African summer monsoon and subsequent ecosystem changes in the Sahara. Feedbacks between atmosphere, land surface, and ocean were shown to strongly amplify monsoon and vegetation changes. Forcing and feedbacks have caused changes far larger in amplitude and extent than experienced today in the Sahara and Sahel. Most, if not all, climate system models, however, tend to underestimate the amplitude of past African monsoon changes and the extent of the land-surface changes in the Sahara. Hence, it seems plausible that some feedback processes are not properly described, or are even missing, in the climate system models.Perhaps even more challenging than explaining the existence of the AHP and the Green Sahara is the interpretation of data that reveal an abrupt termination of the last AHP. Based on climate system modeling and theoretical considerations in the late 1990s, it was proposed that the AHP could have ended, and the Sahara could have expanded, within just a few centuries—that is, much faster than orbital forcing. In 2000, paleo records of terrestrial dust deposition off Mauritania seemingly corroborated the prediction of an abrupt termination. However, with the uncovering of more paleo data, considerable controversy has arisen over the geological evidence of abrupt climate and ecosystem changes. Some records clearly show abrupt changes in some climate and terrestrial parameters, while others do not. Also, climate system modeling provides an ambiguous picture.The prediction of abrupt climate and ecosystem changes at the end of the AHP is hampered by limitations implicit in the climate system. Because of the ubiquitous climate variability, it is extremely unlikely that individual paleo records and model simulations completely match. They could do so in a statistical sense, that is, if the statistics of a large ensemble of paleo data and of model simulations converge. Likewise, the interpretation regarding the strength of terrestrial feedback from individual records is elusive. Plant diversity, rarely captured in climate system models, can obliterate any abrupt shift between green and desert state. Hence, the strength of climate—vegetation feedback is probably not a universal property of a certain region but depends on the vegetation composition, which can change with time. Because of spatial heterogeneity of the African landscape and the African monsoon circulation, abrupt changes can occur in several, but not all, regions at different times during the transition from the humid mid-Holocene climate to the present-day more arid climate. Abrupt changes in one region can be induced by abrupt changes in other regions, a process sometimes referred to as “induced tipping.” The African monsoon system seems to be prone to fast and potentially abrupt changes, which to understand and to predict remains one of the grand challenges in African climate science.

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Developing the next-generation climate system models: challenges and achievements

Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences ◽

10.1098/rsta.2008.0207 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 367 (1890) ◽

pp. 815-831 ◽

Cited By ~ 37

Author(s):

Julia Slingo ◽

Kevin Bates ◽

Nikos Nikiforakis ◽

Matthew Piggott ◽

Malcolm Roberts ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Adaptive Mesh Refinement ◽

Climate Models ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Climate System ◽

System Modelling ◽

Earth System ◽

System Models ◽

Wide Range ◽

Petascale Computing ◽

Climate System Models

Although climate models have been improving in accuracy and efficiency over the past few decades, it now seems that these incremental improvements may be slowing. As tera/petascale computing becomes massively parallel, our legacy codes are less suitable, and even with the increased resolution that we are now beginning to use, these models cannot represent the multiscale nature of the climate system. This paper argues that it may be time to reconsider the use of adaptive mesh refinement for weather and climate forecasting in order to achieve good scaling and representation of the wide range of spatial scales in the atmosphere and ocean. Furthermore, the challenge of introducing living organisms and human responses into climate system models is only just beginning to be tackled. We do not yet have a clear framework in which to approach the problem, but it is likely to cover such a huge number of different scales and processes that radically different methods may have to be considered. The challenges of multiscale modelling and petascale computing provide an opportunity to consider a fresh approach to numerical modelling of the climate (or Earth) system, which takes advantage of the computational fluid dynamics developments in other fields and brings new perspectives on how to incorporate Earth system processes. This paper reviews some of the current issues in climate (and, by implication, Earth) system modelling, and asks the question whether a new generation of models is needed to tackle these problems.

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