Critical Southern Ocean climate model biases traced to atmospheric model cloud errors

Hyder, Patrick; Edwards, John M.; Allan, Richard P.; Hewitt, Helene T.; Bracegirdle, Thomas J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8868-4739; Gregory, Jonathan M.; Wood, Richard A.; Meijers, Andrew J.S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3876-7736; Mulcahy, Jane; Field, Paul; Furtado, Kalli; Bodas-Salcedo, Alejandro; Williams, Keith D.; Copsey, Dan; Josey, Simon A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1683-8831; Liu, Chunlei; Roberts, Chris D.; Sanchez, Claudio; Ridley, Jeff; Thorpe, Livia; Hardiman, Steven C.; Mayar, Michael; Berry, David I.; Belcher, Stephen E.. 2018 Critical Southern Ocean climate model biases traced to atmospheric model cloud errors. Nature Communications, 9, 3625. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05634-2

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Official URL: http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05634-2

Abstract/Summary

The Southern Ocean is a pivotal component of the global climate system yet it is poorly represented in climate models, with significant biases in upper-ocean temperatures, clouds and winds. Combining Atmospheric and Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (AMIP5/CMIP5) simulations, with observations and equilibrium heat budget theory, we show that across the CMIP5 ensemble variations in sea surface temperature biases in the 40–60°S Southern Ocean are primarily caused by AMIP5 atmospheric model net surface flux bias variations, linked to cloud-related short-wave errors. Equilibration of the biases involves local coupled sea surface temperature bias feedbacks onto the surface heat flux components. In combination with wind feedbacks, these biases adversely modify upper-ocean thermal structure. Most AMIP5 atmospheric models that exhibit small net heat flux biases appear to achieve this through compensating errors. We demonstrate that targeted developments to cloud-related parameterisations provide a route to better represent the Southern Ocean in climate models and projections.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05634-2
ISSN:	20411723
Date made live:	13 Sep 2018 15:11 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/520578

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05634-2

ISSN:

20411723

Date made live:

13 Sep 2018 15:11 +0 (UTC)

URI:

https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/520578