scholarly journals Description of the resolution hierarchy of the global coupled HadGEM3-GC3.1 model as used in CMIP6 HighResMIP experiments

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 4999-5028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm J. Roberts ◽  
Alex Baker ◽  
Ed W. Blockley ◽  
Daley Calvert ◽  
Andrew Coward ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) HighResMIP is a new experimental design for global climate model simulations that aims to assess the impact of model horizontal resolution on climate simulation fidelity. We describe a hierarchy of global coupled model resolutions based on the Hadley Centre Global Environment Model 3 – Global Coupled vn 3.1 (HadGEM3-GC3.1) model that ranges from an atmosphere–ocean resolution of 130 km–1∘ to 25 km–1∕12∘, all using the same forcings and initial conditions. In order to make such high-resolution simulations possible, the experiments have a short 30-year spinup, followed by at least century-long simulations with constant forcing to assess drift. We assess the change in model biases as a function of both atmosphere and ocean resolution, together with the effectiveness and robustness of this new experimental design. We find reductions in the biases in top-of-atmosphere radiation components and cloud forcing. There are significant reductions in some common surface climate model biases as resolution is increased, particularly in the Atlantic for sea surface temperature and precipitation, primarily driven by increased ocean resolution. There is also a reduction in drift from the initial conditions both at the surface and in the deeper ocean at higher resolution. Using an eddy-present and eddy-rich ocean resolution enhances the strength of the North Atlantic ocean circulation (boundary currents, overturning circulation and heat transport), while an eddy-present ocean resolution has a considerably reduced Antarctic Circumpolar Current strength. All models have a reasonable representation of El Niño–Southern Oscillation. In general, the biases present after 30 years of simulations do not change character markedly over longer timescales, justifying the experimental design.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm J. Roberts ◽  
Alex Baker ◽  
Ed W. Blockley ◽  
Daley Calvert ◽  
Andrew Coward ◽  
...  

Abstract. CMIP6 HighResMIP is a new experimental design for global climate model simulations that aims to assess the impact of model horizontal resolution on climate simulation fidelity. We describe a hierarchy of global coupled model resolutions based on the HadGEM3-GC3.1 model that range from an atmosphere-ocean resolution of 130 km-1° to 25 km-1/12°, all using the same forcings and initial conditions. In order to make such high resolution simulations possible, the experiments have a short 30 year spinup, followed by at least century-long simulations with both constant forcing (to assess drift and the focus of this work), and historic forcing. We assess the change in model biases as a function of both atmosphere and ocean resolution, together with the effectiveness and robustness of this new experimental design. We find reductions in the biases in top of atmosphere radiation components and cloud forcing. There are significant reductions in some common surface climate model biases as resolution is increased, particularly in the Atlantic for sea surface temperature and precipitation, primarily driven by increased ocean resolution. There is also a reduction in drift from the initial conditions both at the surface and in the deeper ocean at higher resolution. Using an eddy-present and eddy-rich ocean resolution enhances the strength of the North Atlantic ocean circulation (boundary currents, overturning circulation and heat transports), while an eddy-present ocean resolution has a considerably reduced Antarctic Circumpolar Current strength. All models have a reasonable representation of El Nino – Southern Oscillation. In general the biases present after 30 years of simulations do not change character markedly over longer timescales, justifying the experimental design.


2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (20) ◽  
pp. 7083-7099 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. C. Hardiman ◽  
N. Butchart ◽  
T. J. Hinton ◽  
S. M. Osprey ◽  
L. J. Gray

Abstract The importance of using a general circulation model that includes a well-resolved stratosphere for climate simulations, and particularly the influence this has on surface climate, is investigated. High top model simulations are run with the Met Office Unified Model for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). These simulations are compared to equivalent simulations run using a low top model differing only in vertical extent and vertical resolution above 15 km. The period 1960–2002 is analyzed and compared to observations and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis dataset. Long-term climatology, variability, and trends in surface temperature and sea ice, along with the variability of the annular mode index, are found to be insensitive to the addition of a well-resolved stratosphere. The inclusion of a well-resolved stratosphere, however, does improve the impact of atmospheric teleconnections on surface climate, in particular the response to El Niño–Southern Oscillation, the quasi-biennial oscillation, and midwinter stratospheric sudden warmings (i.e., zonal mean wind reversals in the middle stratosphere). Thus, including a well-represented stratosphere could improve climate simulation on intraseasonal to interannual time scales.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Zanchettin ◽  
Claudia Timmreck ◽  
Myriam Khodri ◽  
Anja Schmidt ◽  
Matthew Toohey ◽  
...  

Abstract. This paper provides initial results from a multi-model ensemble analysis based on the volc-pinatubo-full experiment performed within the Model Intercomparison Project on the climatic response to volcanic forcing (VolMIP) as part of the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). The volc-pinatubo-full experiment is based on ensemble of volcanic forcing-only climate simulations with the same volcanic aerosol dataset across the participating models (the 1991–1993 Pinatubo period from the CMIP6-GloSSAC dataset). The simulations are conducted within an idealized experimental design where initial states are sampled consistently across models from the CMIP6-piControl simulation providing unperturbed pre-industrial background conditions. The multi-model ensemble includes output from an initial set of six participating Earth system models (CanESM5, GISS-E2.1-G, IPSL-CM6A-LR, MIROC-E2SL, MPI-ESM1.2-LR and UKESM1). The results show overall good agreement between the different models on the global and hemispheric scale concerning the surface climate responses, thus demonstrating the overall effectiveness of VolMIP’s experimental design. However, small yet significant inter-model discrepancies are found in radiative fluxes especially in the tropics, that preliminary analyses link with minor differences in forcing implementation, model physics, notably aerosol-radiation interactions, the simulation and sampling of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and, possibly, the simulation of climate feedbacks operating in the tropics. We discuss the volc-pinatubo-full protocol and highlight the advantages of volcanic forcing experiments defined within a carefully designed protocol with respect to emerging modeling approaches based on large ensemble transient simulations. We identify how the VolMIP strategy could be improved in future phases of the initiative to ensure a cleaner sampling protocol with greater focus on the evolving state of ENSO in the pre-eruption period.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria-Vittoria Guarino ◽  
Louise C. Sime ◽  
David Schroeder ◽  
Grenville M. S. Lister ◽  
Rosalyn Hatcher

Abstract. When the same weather or climate simulation is run on different high-performance computing (HPC) platforms, model outputs may not be identical for a given initial condition. While the role of HPC platforms in delivering better climate projections is to some extent discussed in the literature, attention is mainly focused on scalability and performance rather than on the impact of machine-dependent processes on the numerical solution. Here we investigate the behaviour of the Preindustrial (PI) simulation prepared by the UK Met Office for the forthcoming CMIP6 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6) under different computing environments. Discrepancies between the means of key climate variables were analysed at different timescales, from decadal to centennial. We found that for the two simulations to be statistically indistinguishable, a 200-year averaging period must be used for the analysis of the results. Thus, constant-forcing climate simulations using the HadGEM3-GC3.1 model are reproducible on different HPC platforms provided that a sufficiently long duration of simulation is used. In regions where El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnection patterns were detected, we found large sea surface temperature and sea ice concentration differences on centennial timescales. This indicates that a 100-year constant-forcing climate simulation may not be long enough to adequately capture the internal variability of the HadGEM3-GC3.1 model, despite this being the minimum simulation length recommended by CMIP6 protocols for many MIP (Model Intercomparison Project) experiments. On the basis of our findings, we recommend a minimum simulation length of 200 years whenever possible.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Auwal F. Abdussalam ◽  
Andrew J. Monaghan ◽  
Daniel F. Steinhoff ◽  
Vanja M. Dukic ◽  
Mary H. Hayden ◽  
...  

Abstract Meningitis remains a major health burden throughout Sahelian Africa, especially in heavily populated northwest Nigeria with an annual incidence rate ranging from 18 to 200 per 100 000 people for 2000–11. Several studies have established that cases exhibit sensitivity to intra- and interannual climate variability, peaking during the hot and dry boreal spring months, raising concern that future climate change may increase the incidence of meningitis in the region. The impact of future climate change on meningitis risk in northwest Nigeria is assessed by forcing an empirical model of meningitis with monthly simulations of seven meteorological variables from an ensemble of 13 statistically downscaled global climate model projections from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Experiment (CMIP5) for representative concentration pathway (RCP) 2.6, 6.0, and 8.5 scenarios, with the numbers representing the globally averaged top-of-the-atmosphere radiative imbalance (in W m−2) in 2100. The results suggest future temperature increases due to climate change have the potential to significantly increase meningitis cases in both the early (2020–35) and late (2060–75) twenty-first century, and for the seasonal onset of meningitis to begin about a month earlier on average by late century, in October rather than November. Annual incidence may increase by 47% ± 8%, 64% ± 9%, and 99% ± 12% for the RCP 2.6, 6.0, and 8.5 scenarios, respectively, in 2060–75 with respect to 1990–2005. It is noteworthy that these results represent the climatological potential for increased cases due to climate change, as it is assumed that current prevention and treatment strategies will remain similar in the future.


2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 857-867 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Dirmeyer

Abstract The impact of improvements in land surface initialization and specification of observed rainfall in global climate model simulations of boreal summer are examined to determine how the changes propagate around the hydrologic cycle in the coupled land–atmosphere system. On the global scale, about 70% of any imparted signal in the hydrologic cycle is lost in the transition from atmosphere to land, and 70% of the remaining signal is lost from land to atmosphere. This means that globally, less than 10% of the signal of any change survives the complete circuit of the hydrologic cycle in this model. Regionally, there is a great deal of variability. Specification of observed precipitation to the land component of the climate model strongly communicates its signal to soil wetness in rainy regions, but predictive skill in evapotranspiration arises primarily in dry regions. A maximum in signal transmission to model precipitation exists in between, peaking where mean rainfall rates are 1.5–2 mm day−1. It appears that the nature of the climate system inherently limits to these regions the potential impact on prediction of improvements in the ability of models to simulate the water cycle. Land initial conditions impart a weaker signal on the system than replacement of precipitation, so a weaker response is realized in the system, focused mainly in dry regions.


2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Phillips

Abstract In this study, the sensitivity of the continental seasonal climate to initial conditions is estimated from an ensemble of decadal simulations of an atmospheric general circulation model with the same specifications of radiative forcings and monthly ocean boundary conditions, but with different initial states of atmosphere and land. As measures of the “reproducibility” of continental climate for different initial conditions, spatiotemporal correlations are computed across paired realizations of 11 model land surface variables in which the seasonal cycle is either included or excluded—the former case being pertinent to climate simulation and the latter to seasonal prediction. It is found that the land surface variables that include the seasonal cycle are impacted only marginally by changes in initial conditions; moreover, their seasonal climatologies exhibit high spatial reproducibility. In contrast, the reproducibility of a seasonal land surface anomaly is generally low, although it is substantially higher in the Tropics; its spatial reproducibility also markedly fluctuates in tandem with warm and cold phases of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. However, the overall degree of reproducibility depends on the particular land surface anomaly considered. It is also shown that the predictability of a land surface anomaly implied by its reproducibility statistics is consistent with what is inferred from more conventional predictability metrics. Implications of these results for climate model intercomparison projects and for operational forecasts of seasonal continental climate also are elaborated.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (21) ◽  
pp. 8034-8054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyeong-Seog Kim ◽  
Gabriel A. Vecchi ◽  
Thomas R. Knutson ◽  
Whit G. Anderson ◽  
Thomas L. Delworth ◽  
...  

Abstract Global tropical cyclone (TC) activity is simulated by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) Climate Model, version 2.5 (CM2.5), which is a fully coupled global climate model with a horizontal resolution of about 50 km for the atmosphere and 25 km for the ocean. The present climate simulation shows a fairly realistic global TC frequency, seasonal cycle, and geographical distribution. The model has some notable biases in regional TC activity, including simulating too few TCs in the North Atlantic. The regional biases in TC activity are associated with simulation biases in the large-scale environment such as sea surface temperature, vertical wind shear, and vertical velocity. Despite these biases, the model simulates the large-scale variations of TC activity induced by El Niño–Southern Oscillation fairly realistically. The response of TC activity in the model to global warming is investigated by comparing the present climate with a CO2 doubling experiment. Globally, TC frequency decreases (−19%) while the intensity increases (+2.7%) in response to CO2 doubling, consistent with previous studies. The average TC lifetime decreases by −4.6%, while the TC size and rainfall increase by about 3% and 12%, respectively. These changes are generally reproduced across the different basins in terms of the sign of the change, although the percent changes vary from basin to basin and within individual basins. For the Atlantic basin, although there is an overall reduction in frequency from CO2 doubling, the warmed climate exhibits increased interannual hurricane frequency variability so that the simulated Atlantic TC activity is enhanced more during unusually warm years in the CO2-warmed climate relative to that in unusually warm years in the control climate.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Rackow ◽  
Nils Wedi ◽  
Kristian Mogensen ◽  
Peter Dueben ◽  
Helge F. Goessling ◽  
...  

<p>This presentation will give an overview about an ongoing collaboration between the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). Our recent development is a single-executable coupled configuration of the Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) and the Finite Volume Sea Ice-Ocean Model, FESOM2. This configuration is set up to participate in the DYAMOND project alongside ECMWF’s default IFS-NEMO configuration. IFS-FESOM2 and IFS-NEMO are tentative models to generate “Digital Twin” storm-scale, coupled simulations as envisioned in the European Destination Earth (DestinE) and Next Generation Earth Modelling Systems (NextGEMS) projects.</p><p>FESOM2 has a novel dynamical core that supports multi-resolution triangular grids. The model and its predecessor FESOM1 have been used in many studies over the last decade, with a focus on the role of the polar regions in global ocean circulation. The impact of eddy-permitting and locally eddy-resolving resolution has been addressed in CMIP6 and HighResMIP simulations as part of the AWI-CM-1-1 global climate model, while simulations with up to 1km resolution in the Arctic Ocean have been performed in stand-alone mode.</p><p>Initially, two coupled IFS-FESOM2 configurations have been tested: A coarse-resolution setup with a nominal 1° ocean, and a DYAMOND-II configuration with 0.25° ocean and IFS at 4.5km global resolution on average. For the latter configuration, FESOM2 is mimicking the “ORCA025” tri-polar curvilinear grid of the NEMO model, whose grid boxes have been split into triangles. Initialisation is from ECMWF’s analysis for IFS and NEMO, and from an ERA5-forced ocean spin-up for FESOM2. We discuss technical challenges with respect to the hybrid OpenMP and MPI parallelization in a single-executable context, describe a novel strategy for resource-efficient writing of model output, and summarise future applications such as exploring the impact of flexible FESOM2 grid configurations on the atmosphere - with ocean simulations that resolve leads in sea ice and ocean eddies almost everywhere.</p>


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heerbod Jahanbani ◽  
Lee Teang Shui ◽  
Alireza Massah Bavani ◽  
Abdul Halim Ghazali

There are many factors of uncertainty regarding the impact of climate change on reference evapotranspiration (ETo). The accuracy of the results is strictly related to these factors and ignoring any one of them reduces the precision of the results, and reduces their applicability for decision makers. In this study, the uncertainty related to two ETo models, the Hargreaves-Samani (HGS) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and two Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs), Hadley Centre Coupled Model, version 3 (HadCM3) climatic model and the Canadian Global Climate Model, version 3 (CGCM3) climatic model under climate change, was evaluated. The models predicted average temperature increases by 2010 to 2039 of 0.95 °C by the HadCM3 model and 1.13°C by the CGCM3 model under the A2 scenario relative to observed temperature. Accordingly, the models predicted average ETo would increase of 0.48, 0.60, 0.50 and 0.60 (mm/day) by 2010 to 2039 projected by four methods (by introducing the temperature of the HadCM3-A2 model and the CGCM3-A2 to ANN and HGS) relative to ETo of the observed period. The results showed that uncertainty of the AOGCMs is more than that of the ETo models applied in this study.


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