The general circulation models used to simulate global climate typically feature resolution too coarse to reproduce many smaller-scale processes, which are crucial to determining the regional responses to climate change. A novel approach to downscale climate change scenarios is presented which includes the interactions between the North Atlantic Ocean and the European shelves as well as their impact on the North Atlantic and European climate. The goal of this paper is to introduce the global ocean-regional atmosphere coupling concept and to show the potential benefits of this model system to simulate present-day climate. A global ocean-sea ice-marine biogeochemistry model (MPIOM/HAMOCC) with regionally high horizontal resolution is coupled to an atmospheric regional model (REMO) and global terrestrial hydrology model (HD) via the OASIS coupler. Moreover, results obtained with ROM using NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and ECHAM5/MPIOM CMIP3 historical simulations as boundary conditions are presented and discussed for the North Atlantic and North European region. The validation of all the model components, i.e., ocean, atmosphere, terrestrial hydrology, and ocean biogeochemistry is performed and discussed. The careful and detailed validation of ROM provides evidence that the proposed model system improves the simulation of many aspects of the regional climate, remarkably the ocean, even though some biases persist in other model components, thus leaving potential for future improvement. We conclude that ROM is a powerful tool to estimate possible impacts of climate change on the regional scale.

Several multi-century and multi-millennia simulations have been performed with a complex Earth System Model (ESM) for different anthropogenic climate change scenarios in order to study the long-term evolution of sea level and the impact of ice sheet changes on the climate system. The core of the ESM is a coupled coarseresolution Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model (AOGCM). Ocean biogeochemistry, land vegetation and ice sheets are included as components of the ESM. The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) decays in all simulations, while the Antarctic ice sheet contributes negatively to sea level rise, due to enhanced storage of water caused by larger snowfall rates. Freshwater flux increases from Greenland are one order of magnitude smaller than total freshwater flux increases into the North Atlantic basin (the sum of the contribution from changes in precipitation, evaporation, run-off and Greenland meltwater) and do not play an important role in changes in the strength of the North Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (NAMOC). The regional climate change associated with weakening/ collapse of the NAMOC drastically reduces the decay rate of the GrIS. The dynamical changes due to GrIS topography modification driven by mass balance changes act first as a negative feedback for the decay of the ice sheet, but accelerate the decay at a later stage. The increase of surface temperature due to reduced topographic heights causes a strong acceleration of the decay of the ice sheet in the long term. Other feedbacks between ice sheet and atmosphere are not important for the mass balance of the GrIS until it is reduced to 3/4 of the original size. From then, the reduction in the albedo of Greenland strongly accelerates the decay of the ice sheet.

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Abstract. There is a growing number of proxy-based reconstructions detailing the climatic changes that occurred during the last interglacial period (LIG). This period is of special interest, because large parts of the globe were characterized by a warmer-than-present-day climate, making this period an interesting test bed for climate models in light of projected global warming. However, mainly because synchronizing the different palaeoclimatic records is difficult, there is no consensus on a global picture of LIG temperature changes. Here we present the first model inter-comparison of transient simulations covering the LIG period. By comparing the different simulations, we aim at investigating the common signal in the LIG temperature evolution, investigating the main driving forces behind it and at listing the climate feedbacks which cause the most apparent inter-model differences. The model inter-comparison shows a robust Northern Hemisphere July temperature evolution characterized by a maximum between 130–125 ka BP with temperatures 0.3 to 5.3 K above present day. A Southern Hemisphere July temperature maximum, −1.3 to 2.5 K at around 128 ka BP, is only found when changes in the greenhouse gas concentrations are included. The robustness of simulated January temperatures is large in the Southern Hemisphere and the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. For these regions maximum January temperature anomalies of respectively −1 to 1.2 K and −0.8 to 2.1 K are simulated for the period after 121 ka BP. In both hemispheres these temperature maxima are in line with the maximum in local summer insolation. In a number of specific regions, a common temperature evolution is not found amongst the models. We show that this is related to feedbacks within the climate system which largely determine the simulated LIG temperature evolution in these regions. Firstly, in the Arctic region, changes in the summer sea-ice cover control the evolution of LIG winter temperatures. Secondly, for the Atlantic region, the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific, possible changes in the characteristics of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation are crucial. Thirdly, the presence of remnant continental ice from the preceding glacial has shown to be important when determining the timing of maximum LIG warmth in the Northern Hemisphere. Finally, the results reveal that changes in the monsoon regime exert a strong control on the evolution of LIG temperatures over parts of Africa and India. By listing these inter-model differences, we provide a starting point for future proxy-data studies and the sensitivity experiments needed to constrain the climate simulations and to further enhance our understanding of the temperature evolution of the LIG period.