Idealized Land-sea Warming Contrast Experiments with Two Global Circulation Models: Preliminary results

Abstract:

Simulations of warming climates with climate models have pointed out that land surface temperatures will increase more rapidly than sea surface temperature (SST), which is known as the “land-sea warming contrast”. We investigate the response of a zonally symmetric atmosphere to robust land-sea surface warming contrast using two global circulation models (GCMs): Non-hydrostatic Icosahedral Model (NIM) and Global and Regional Integrated Model system (GRIMs). NIM is a Finite-volume icosahedral model developed as a next-generation operational model at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Earth System Research Laboratory (NOAA ESRL). Full model physics were taken from Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) physics suite. GRIMs is a spectral model which has been developed in Korea (Hong et al., 2013, APJAS). It has flexibility for selection of comparable physics options with NIM.

Two sets of experiments are designed: one is the control experiment with zonally-symmetric distributions with maxima at the equator and varying off-equatorial temperature gradients on ocean and land. The other experiment will impose the land/sea warming ratio of 1.5. Since two models can be set up with identical physics parameterizations, general consensus on responses and model-dependent feedback can be suggested.