A CMIP6 multi-model study of fast responses on pre-industrial climate due to present-day aerosols

Author(s):  
Prodromos Zanis ◽  
Dimitris Akritidis ◽  
Aristeidis K. Georgoulias ◽  
Robert J. Allen ◽  
Susanne E. Bauer ◽  
...  

<p>We present an analysis of the fast responses on pre-industrial climate due to present-day aerosols in a multi-model study based on Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) simulations from 10 Earth System Models (ESMs) and General Circulation Models (GCMs). The aforementioned simulations were implemented within the framework of the Aerosol Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project (AerChemMIP). All models carried out two sets of simulations; a control experiment with all forcings set to the year 1850 and a perturbation experiment with all forcings identical to the control, except for aerosols with precursor emissions set to the year 2014. The perturbation by the present-day aerosols indicates negative top of the atmosphere (TOA) effective radiative forcing (ERF) values around the globe, especially over continental regions of the Northern Hemisphere in summer, with the largest negative values appearing over East Asia. Simulations in 3 models (CNRM-ESM2-1, MRI-ESM2-0 and NorESM2-LM) with individual perturbation experiments using present day SO<sub>2</sub>, BC and OC emissions show the dominating role of sulfates in all-aerosols ERF. In response to the pattern of all aerosols ERF, the fast temperature responses are characterised by cooling over the continental areas, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, with the largest cooling over East Asia and India and sulfate being the dominant aerosol surface temperature driver for present-day emissions. The largest fast precipitation responses are seen in the tropical belt regions, generally characterized by  a reduction over continental regions and a southward shift of the tropical rain belt. This is a characteristic and robust feature among most models in this study, associated with a southward shift of the Intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) and a weakening of the monsoon systems around the globe (Asia, Africa and America) in response to hemispherically asymmetric cooling from a Northern Hemisphere aerosol perturbation. An interesting feature in aerosol induced circulation changes is a characteristic dipole pattern with intensification of the Icelandic Low and an anticyclonic anomaly over Southeastern Europe, inducing warm air advection towards the northern polar latitudes in winter.</p><p>This research was funded by the project "PANhellenic infrastructure for Atmospheric Composition and climatE change" (MIS 5021516) which is implemented under the Action "Reinforcement of the Research and Innovation Infrastructure", funded by the Operational Programme "Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation" (NSRF 2014-2020) and co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund).</p>

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prodromos Zanis ◽  
Dimitris Akritidis ◽  
Aristeidis K. Georgoulias ◽  
Robert J. Allen ◽  
Susanne E. Bauer ◽  
...  

Abstract. In this work, we use Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) simulations from 10 Earth System Models (ESMs) and General Circulation Models (GCMs) to study the fast climate responses on pre-industrial climate, due to present-day aerosols. All models carried out two sets of simulations; a control experiment with all forcings set to the year 1850 and a perturbation experiment with all forcings identical to the control, except for aerosols with precursor emissions set to the year 2014. In response to the pattern of all aerosols effective radiative forcing (ERF), the fast temperature responses are characterised by cooling over the continental areas, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, with the largest cooling over East Asia and India, sulfate being the dominant aerosol surface temperature driver for present-day emissions. In the Arctic there is a warming signal for winter in the ensemble mean of fast temperature responses, but the model-to-model variability is large, and it is presumably linked to aerosol induced circulation changes. The largest fast precipitation responses are seen in the tropical belt regions, generally characterized by a reduction over continental regions and a southward shift of the tropical rain belt. This is a characteristic and robust feature among most models in this study, associated with a southward shift of the Intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) and a weakening of the monsoon systems around the globe (Asia, Africa and America) in response to hemispherically asymmetric cooling from a Northern Hemisphere aerosol perturbation, leading the ITCZ and tropical precipitation to shift away from the cooled hemispheric pattern. An interesting feature in aerosol induced circulation changes is a characteristic dipole pattern with intensification of the Icelandic Low and an anticyclonic anomaly over Southeastern Europe, inducing warm air advection towards the northern polar latitudes in winter.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 21105-21210 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. T. Shindell ◽  
J.-F. Lamarque ◽  
M. Schulz ◽  
M. Flanner ◽  
C. Jiao ◽  
...  

Abstract. A primary goal of the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP) was to characterize the short-lived drivers of preindustrial to 2100 climate change in the current generation of climate models. Here we evaluate historical and future radiative forcing in the 10 ACCMIP models that included aerosols, 8 of which also participated in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5). The models generally reproduce present-day climatological total aerosol optical depth (AOD) relatively well. They have quite different contributions from various aerosol components to this total, however, and most appear to underestimate AOD over East Asia. The models generally capture 1980–2000 AOD trends fairly well, though they underpredict AOD increases over the Yellow/Eastern Sea. They appear to strongly underestimate absorbing AOD, especially in East Asia, South and Southeast Asia, South America and Southern Hemisphere Africa. We examined both the conventional direct radiative forcing at the tropopause (RF) and the forcing including rapid adjustments (adjusted forcing; AF, including direct and indirect effects). The models' calculated all aerosol all-sky 1850 to 2000 global mean annual average RF ranges from −0.06 to −0.49 W m−2, with a mean of −0.26 W m−2 and a median of −0.27 W m−2. Adjusting for missing aerosol components in some models brings the range to −0.12 to −0.62 W m−2, with a mean of −0.39 W m−2. Screening the models based on their ability to capture spatial patterns and magnitudes of AOD and AOD trends yields a quality-controlled mean of −0.42 W m−2 and range of −0.33 to −0.50 W m−2 (accounting for missing components). The CMIP5 subset of ACCMIP models spans −0.06 to −0.49 W m−2, suggesting some CMIP5 simulations likely have too little aerosol RF. A substantial, but not well quantified, contribution to historical aerosol RF may come from climate feedbacks (35 to −58 %). The mean aerosol AF during this period is −1.12 W m−2 (median value −1.16 W m−2, range −0.72 to −1.44 W m−2), indicating that adjustments to aerosols, which include cloud, water vapor and temperature, lead to stronger forcing than the aerosol direct RF. Both negative aerosol RF and AF are greatest over and near Europe, South and East Asia and North America during 1850 to 2000. AF, however, is positive over both polar regions, the Sahara, and the Karakoram. Annual average AF is stronger than 0.5 W m−2 over parts of the Arctic and more than 1.5 W m−2 during boreal summer. Examination of the regional pattern of RF and AF shows that the multi-model spread relative to the mean of AF is typically the same or smaller than that for RF over areas with substantial forcing. Historical aerosol RF peaks in nearly all models around 1980, declining thereafter. Aerosol RF declines greatly in most models over the 21st century and is only weakly sensitive to the particular Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP). One model, however, shows approximate stabilization at current RF levels under RCP 8.5, while two others show increasingly negative RF due to the influence of nitrate aerosols (which are not included in most models). Aerosol AF, in contrast, continues to become more negative during 1980 to 2000 despite the turnaround in RF. Total anthropogenic composition forcing (RF due to well-mixed greenhouse gases (WMGHGs) and ozone plus aerosol AF) shows substantial masking of greenhouse forcing by aerosols towards the end of the 20{th} century and in the early 21st century at the global scale. Regionally, net forcing is negative over most industrialized and biomass burning regions through 1980, but remains strongly negative only over East and Southeast Asia by 2000 and only over a very small part of Southeast Asia by 2030 (under RCP8.5). Net forcing is strongly positive by 1980 over the Sahara, Arabian peninsula, the Arctic, Southern Hemisphere South America, Australia and most of the oceans. Both the magnitude of and area covered by positive forcing expand steadily thereafter. There is no clear relationship between aerosol AF and climate sensitivity in the CMIP5 subset of ACCMIP models. There is a clear link between the strength of aerosol+ozone forcing and the global mean historical climate response to anthropogenic non-WMGHG forcing (ANWF). The models show ~20–35% greater climate sensitivity to ANWF than to WMGHG forcing, at least in part due to geographic differences in climate sensitivity. These lead to ~50% more warming in the Northern Hemisphere in response to increasing WMGHGs. This interhemispheric asymmetry is enhanced for ANWF by an additional 10–30%. At smaller spatial scales, response to ANWF and WMGHGs show distinct differences.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Weum Stjern ◽  
Bjørn Hallvard Samset ◽  
Gunnar Myhre ◽  
Huisheng Bian ◽  
Mian Chin ◽  
...  

Abstract. In the Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution Phase 2 (HTAP) exercise, a range of global atmospheric general circulation and chemical transport models performed coordinated perturbation experiments with 20 % reductions in emissions of anthropogenic aerosols, or aerosol precursors, in a number of source regions. Here, we compare the resulting changes in the atmospheric load and vertically resolved profiles of black carbon (BC), organic aerosols (OA) and sulfate (SO4) from 10 models that include treatment of aerosols. We use a set of temporally, horizontally and vertically resolved profiles of aerosol forcing efficiency (AFE) to estimate the impact of emission changes in six major source regions on global radiative forcing (RF) pertaining to the direct aerosol effect. Results show that mitigations in South and East Asia have substantial impacts on the radiative budget in all investigated receptor regions, especially for BC. In Russia and the Middle East, more than 80 % of the forcing for BC and OA is due to extra-regional emission reductions. Similarly, for North America, BC emissions control in East Asia is found to be more important than domestic mitigations, which is consistent with previous findings. Comparing fully resolved RF calculations to RF estimates based on vertically averaged AFE profiles allows us to quantify the importance of vertical resolution to RF estimates. We find that locally in the source regions, a 20 % emission reduction strengthens the radiative forcing associated with SO4 by 25 % when including the vertical dimension, as the AFE for SO4 is strongest near the surface. Conversely, the local RF from BC weakens by 37 % since BC AFE is low close to the ground. The influence of inter-continental transport on BC forcing, however, is enhanced by one third when accounting for the vertical aspect, because long-range transport leads primarily to aerosol changes at high altitudes, where the BC AFE is strong.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (14) ◽  
pp. 8381-8404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prodromos Zanis ◽  
Dimitris Akritidis ◽  
Aristeidis K. Georgoulias ◽  
Robert J. Allen ◽  
Susanne E. Bauer ◽  
...  

Abstract. In this work, we use Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) simulations from 10 Earth system models (ESMs) and general circulation models (GCMs) to study the fast climate responses on pre-industrial climate, due to present-day aerosols. All models carried out two sets of simulations: a control experiment with all forcings set to the year 1850 and a perturbation experiment with all forcings identical to the control, except for aerosols with precursor emissions set to the year 2014. In response to the pattern of all aerosols effective radiative forcing (ERF), the fast temperature responses are characterized by cooling over the continental areas, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, with the largest cooling over East Asia and India, sulfate being the dominant aerosol surface temperature driver for present-day emissions. In the Arctic there is a warming signal for winter in the ensemble mean of fast temperature responses, but the model-to-model variability is large, and it is presumably linked to aerosol-induced circulation changes. The largest fast precipitation responses are seen in the tropical belt regions, generally characterized by a reduction over continental regions and presumably a southward shift of the tropical rain belt. This is a characteristic and robust feature among most models in this study, associated with weakening of the monsoon systems around the globe (Asia, Africa and America) in response to hemispherically asymmetric cooling from a Northern Hemisphere aerosol perturbation, forcing possibly the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and tropical precipitation to shift away from the cooled hemisphere despite that aerosols' effects on temperature and precipitation are only partly realized in these simulations as the sea surface temperatures are kept fixed. An interesting feature in aerosol-induced circulation changes is a characteristic dipole pattern with intensification of the Icelandic Low and an anticyclonic anomaly over southeastern Europe, inducing warm air advection towards the northern polar latitudes in winter.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuanming Su

<p>The Simple Climate Model for Optimization version 2.0 (SCM4OPT v2.0) is one of the contributors to the Reduced Complexity Model Intercomparison Project Phase 2 (RCMIP2). However, low effective radiative forcing is emulated in SCM4OPT v2.0, which is driven by the strong negative aerosol effective radiative forcing and considered to be an outlier compared to other models. In addition, the carbon cycles and climate system in SCM4OPT v2.0 are calibrated based on the outputs from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), which cannot reflect the latest Earth system model results. In this study, we update the reduced-complexity model to SCM4OPT v3.0. First, we re-calibrate the carbon cycles, including land carbon-cycle and ocean carbon-cycle, and the climate system according to 32 coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) with selected experimental outputs in the latest CMIP6; Second, we fix the aerosol forcing by introducing a constrain in the light of the IPCC AR5 aerosol forcing. We retain the lightweight and efficient nature of this model, in order to make it suitable to be involved in a large-scale optimization process. Using SCM4OPT v3.0, we produce a new set of scenario simulations by using the dataset of harmonized emissions used in CMIP6 and compare with other reduced-complexity models. SCM4OPT v3.0 is expected to simulate climate-related uncertainties regarding the latest understanding of climate change.</p>


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).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Griffiths ◽  
Zeng Guang ◽  
Sungbo Shim ◽  
Jane Mulcahy ◽  
Lee Murray ◽  
...  

<p>A grand challenge in the field of chemistry-climate modelling is to understand the connection between anthropogenic emissions, atmospheric composition and the radiative forcing of trace gases and aerosols.   The AerChemMIP model intercomparison project, part of CMIP6, focuses on calculating the radiative forcing of gases and aerosol particles over the period 1850 to 2100.  We present an analysis of the trends in tropospheric ozone budget in the UKESM1 and other models from CMIP6 experiments. We discuss these trends in terms of chemical production and loss of ozone as well as physical processes such as transport and deposition.  Where possible, AerChemMIP attribution experiments such as histSST-piCH4, will be used to quantify the effect of individual emissions and forcing changes on the historical ozone burden and budget.  For future experiments, we focus on analogous experiments from the SSP3-70 scenario, a ‘regional rivalry’ shared socioeconomic pathway involving significant emissions changes.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 585-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Collins ◽  
Jean-François Lamarque ◽  
Michael Schulz ◽  
Olivier Boucher ◽  
Veronika Eyring ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Aerosol Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project (AerChemMIP) is endorsed by the Coupled-Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6) and is designed to quantify the climate and air quality impacts of aerosols and chemically reactive gases. These are specifically near-term climate forcers (NTCFs: methane, tropospheric ozone and aerosols, and their precursors), nitrous oxide and ozone-depleting halocarbons. The aim of AerChemMIP is to answer four scientific questions. 1. How have anthropogenic emissions contributed to global radiative forcing and affected regional climate over the historical period? 2. How might future policies (on climate, air quality and land use) affect the abundances of NTCFs and their climate impacts? 3.How do uncertainties in historical NTCF emissions affect radiative forcing estimates? 4. How important are climate feedbacks to natural NTCF emissions, atmospheric composition, and radiative effects? These questions will be addressed through targeted simulations with CMIP6 climate models that include an interactive representation of tropospheric aerosols and atmospheric chemistry. These simulations build on the CMIP6 Diagnostic, Evaluation and Characterization of Klima (DECK) experiments, the CMIP6 historical simulations, and future projections performed elsewhere in CMIP6, allowing the contributions from aerosols and/or chemistry to be quantified. Specific diagnostics are requested as part of the CMIP6 data request to highlight the chemical composition of the atmosphere, to evaluate the performance of the models, and to understand differences in behaviour between them.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (19) ◽  
pp. 7747-7766 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anmin Duan ◽  
Jun Hu ◽  
Zhixiang Xiao

Abstract Temporal variability within the Tibetan Plateau summer monsoon (TPSM) is closely linked to both the East and South Asian summer monsoons over several time scales but has received much less attention than these other systems. In this study, extensive integrations under phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) historical scenarios from 15 coupled general circulation models (CGCMs) and Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) runs from eight atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) are used to evaluate the performance of these GCMs. Results indicate that all GCMs are able to simulate the climate mean TPSM circulation system. However, the large bias associated with precipitation intensity and patterns remains, despite the higher resolution and inclusion of the indirect effects of sulfate aerosol that have helped to improve the skill of the models to simulate the annual cycle of precipitation in both AGCMs and CGCMs. The interannual variability of the surface heat low and the Tibetan high in most of the AGCMs resembles the observation reasonably because of the prescribed forcing fields. However, only a few models were able to reproduce the observed seesaw pattern associated with the interannual variability of the TPSM and the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM). Regarding long-term trends, most models overestimated the amplitude of the tropospheric warming and the declining trend in the surface heat low between 1979 and 2005. In addition, the observed cooling trend in the upper troposphere and the decline of the Tibetan high were not reproduced by most models. Therefore, there is still significant scope for improving GCM simulations of regional climate change, especially in regions near extensive mountain ranges.


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