The sea-ice performance of the Australian climate models participating in the CMIP5

Uotila, Petteri; O’Farrell, Siobhan; Marsland, Simon J.; Bi, Daohua

doi:10.22499/2.6301.008

Cited by 22 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The ocean climate diagnostic suite presented here is useful for evaluating the quality of the simulations, and also for assessing the future evolution of climate under the prescribed CMIP5 forcing protocols. The results presented here should be considered as a complement to other analyses of ACCESS1.0 and ACCESS1.3 that appear in this special issue: namely the sea-ice study of Uotila et al (2013); the overview of Bi et al (2013a); the atmospheric model assessments of Dix et al (2013), Rashid et al (2013a) and Watterson et al (2013); the El Niño Southern Oscillation analysis of Rashid et al (2013b); and the land surface evaluation of Kowalczyk et al (2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Evaluation of ACCESS climate model ocean diagnostics in CMIP5 simulations

Marsland¹,

Bi²,

Uotila³

et al. 2013

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Global and regional diagnostics are used to evaluate the ocean performance of the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator coupled model (ACCESS-CM) contributions to the Climate Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5). Two versions of ACCESS-CM have been submitted to CMIP; namely CSIRO-BOM ACCESS1.0 and CSIRO-BOM ACCESS1.3. Results from six of the core CMIP5 experiments (piControl, historical, rcp45, rcp85, 1pctCO2, and abrupt4xCO2) are evaluated for each of the two ACCESS-CM model versions. Overall, both model versions exhibit a reasonable and stable representation of key diagnostics of ocean climate performance in the pre-industrial control simulations, including a meridional overturning circulation with North Atlantic Deep Water maxima in the range 22-24 Sv, and a poleward heat transport maximum of around 1.5 PW. For the projected climate change scenarios considered the ACCESS-CM results are in reasonable agreement with responses found in other CMIP models, with the familiar ocean warming, and reduction in strength of meridional overturning and poleward heat transport. Drifts in the control simulations of both global ocean salinity and global sea-level are opposite in sign for ACCESS1.0 and ACCESS1.3, suggesting problems exist in the closure of the hydrological cycle. The simulation of ocean climate change over the historical period shows a weak response compared to observations, which manifests as a late response of ocean warming and sea level rise starting around 1990 in the model, compared to the mid 1960s in observations. Further historical simulations are underway to ascertain if this late response in ACCESS is a robust model feature, or just low frequency variability. If the weak response over the historical period proves robust, the likely cause is a too strong cooling from atmospheric aerosols. Broadening the set of experiments to further investigate the relative warming response of the ACCESS-CM to greenhouse gases compared to the cooling response to aerosols is underway, and preliminary results do suggest that the cooling due to aerosols is strong in the historical simulations. ACCESS-CM are given in Bi et al. (2013a), and summarised here in Table 1 for completeness.Coupled model contributions to CMIP5 provide an opportunity to evaluate an extensive set of key global and regional diagnostics of ocean performance relevant to the climate system. Our choice of model diagnostics, while not comprehensive, is aimed to illustrate the ACCESS-CM performance in terms of key integrals of global ocean climate (e.g. meridional overturning circulation and poleward heat transport), that demonstrate both the level of stability of the control simulations, and the response to climate change forcing scenarios. We benefit from the availability of a large suite of outputs as was recommended by the World Climate Research Program Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Working Group on Ocean Model Development (WGOMD) to the development of the CMIP5 protocols (Griffies et al. 2009a). Our choi...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Evaluation of ACCESS climate model ocean diagnostics in CMIP5 simulations

Marsland¹,

Bi²,

Uotila³

et al. 2013

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“…The negative biases, on the other hand, occur in the Weddell Sea, in the Amundsen and Ross Seas, and around the East Antarctic coast ( Fig. 13(b), 13(d)), and are most likely due to open ocean convection warming the ocean surface and causing melting of sea-ice from below (Marsland and Wolff 2001;Uotila et al 2013;Marsland et al 2013). The largest negative biases are over 0.8 m in the western Weddell Sea in winter ( Fig.…”

Section: Sea-ice Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In JFM (JJA), the CNYF2-BM sea-ice motion is southward (northward), while in GIOMAS it is to the north (south). This difference may reflect how differently the models resolve the narrow Bering Strait and could also indicate how the water and heat fluxes are resolved in ACCESS-OM (see also Uotila et al 2013). …”

Section: Sea-ice Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

ACCESS-OM: the ocean and sea-ice core of the ACCESS coupled model

Bi¹,

Marsland²,

Uotila³

et al. 2013

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“…Further details of the atmospheric changes are shown by Rashid et al (2013), and results for the ocean and sea-ice changes are presented by Marsland et al (2013), and Uotila et al (2013).…”

Section: Historical Simulations and 21st Century Climate Projections mentioning

confidence: 99%

The ACCESS coupled model: documentation of core CMIP5 simulations and initial results

Dix¹,

Vohralik²,

Bi³

et al. 2013

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There are two versions of global coupled climate models developed at the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR) participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP5), namely ACCESS1.0 and AC-CESS1.3. This paper describes the CMIP5 experimental configuration of the AC-CESS models and the climate forcings for the historical and future scenario runs.We also present an initial analysis of model results, concentrating on changes in surface air temperature and the hydrologic cycle, and on climate sensitivity. Both models somewhat underestimate the observed 20th century warming, particularly in mid century, though recent warming rates match those observed. Mean warming for 2081-2100 relative to 1986-2005 under the RCP8.5 scenario is 3.61 K and 3.56 K for ACCESS1.0 and ACCESS1.3 respectively, and under RCP4.5 it is 2.34 K and 2.12 K.Climate sensitivity from idealised simulations is 10-15 per cent larger in AC-CESS1.0 than ACCESS1.3 and both models are above the median of the range of CMIP3 and published CMIP5 results.

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The sea-ice performance of the Australian climate models participating in the CMIP5

Cited by 22 publications

References 45 publications

Evaluation of ACCESS climate model ocean diagnostics in CMIP5 simulations

Evaluation of ACCESS climate model ocean diagnostics in CMIP5 simulations

ACCESS-OM: the ocean and sea-ice core of the ACCESS coupled model

The ACCESS coupled model: documentation of core CMIP5 simulations and initial results

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