Margaret J. Woodage

Indirect sulphate aerosol forcing in a climate model with an interactive sulphur cycle

The effects of anthropogenic sulphate aerosol on cloud albedo and on precipitation efficiency (the first and second indirect effects, respectively) are investigated using a new version of the Hadley Centre climate model. This version includes a new cloud microphysics scheme, an interactive sulphur cycle, and a parameterization of the effects of sea salt aerosol. The combined global mean radiative impact from both indirect effects is estimated to be approximately −1.9 W m−2 in terms of the change in net cloud forcing, with the “albedo” effect dominating: we obtain values of −1.3 and −0.5 W m−2 for the first and second effects, respectively, when calculated separately. The estimate for the combined effect has at least a factor of 2 uncertainty associated with it: for example, alternative assumptions which affect the concentration of natural “background” sulphate aerosol reduce the forcing by over 25%, and different parameterizations of the autoconversion of cloud droplets to rainwater can double the forcing.

U.K. HiGEM: The New U.K. High-Resolution Global Environment Model—Model Description and Basic Evaluation

Abstract This article describes the development and evaluation of the U.K.’s new High-Resolution Global Environmental Model (HiGEM), which is based on the latest climate configuration of the Met Office Unified Model, known as the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model, version 1 (HadGEM1). In HiGEM, the horizontal resolution has been increased to 0.83° latitude × 1.25° longitude for the atmosphere, and 1/3° × 1/3° globally for the ocean. Multidecadal integrations of HiGEM, and the lower-resolution HadGEM, are used to explore the impact of resolution on the fidelity of climate simulations. Generally, SST errors are reduced in HiGEM. Cold SST errors associated with the path of the North Atlantic drift improve, and warm SST errors are reduced in upwelling stratocumulus regions where the simulation of low-level cloud is better at higher resolution. The ocean model in HiGEM allows ocean eddies to be partially resolved, which dramatically improves the representation of sea surface height variability. In the S...

Climate sensitivity to ocean dimethylsulphide emissions

The production of dimethylsulphide (DMS) by ocean phytoplankton is hypothesized to form part of a feedback process on global climate. Changes in the DMS flux to the atmosphere cause changes to aerosols for cloud formation, leading to changes in the amount of radiation reaching the ocean, and hence on the planktonic production of DMS. This hypothesis has been investigated using a coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model (COAGCM) that includes an ocean ecosystem model and an atmospheric sulphur cycle. Ocean DMS concentrations are parameterised as a function of chlorophyll, nutrient and light. The results of several sensitivity experiments are presented showing significant global climate change responses to perturbations in ocean DMS production. A small negative feedback from climate change onto ocean DMS production is found and the implications are discussed.

U.K. HiGEM: Simulations of desert dust and biomass burning aerosols with a high-resolution atmospheric GCM

Abstract The atmospheric component of the United Kingdom’s new High-resolution Global Environmental Model (HiGEM) has been run with interactive aerosol schemes that include biomass burning and mineral dust. Dust emission, transport, and deposition are parameterized within the model using six particle size divisions, which are treated independently. The biomass is modeled in three nonindependent modes, and emissions are prescribed from an external dataset. The model is shown to produce realistic horizontal and vertical distributions of these aerosols for each season when compared with available satellite- and ground-based observations and with other models. Combined aerosol optical depths off the coast of North Africa exceed 0.5 both in boreal winter, when biomass is the main contributor, and also in summer, when the dust dominates. The model is capable of resolving smaller-scale features, such as dust storms emanating from the Bodele and Saharan regions of North Africa and the wintertime Bodele low-level ...

High-Resolution Forecast Models of Water Vapor Over Mountains: Comparison With MERIS and Meteosat Data

Propagation delay due to variable tropospheric water vapor (WV) is one of the most intractable problems for radar interferometry, particularly over mountains. The WV field can be simulated by an atmospheric model, and the difference between the two fields is used to correct the radar interferogram. Here, we report our use of the U.K. Met Office Unified Model in a nested mode to produce high-resolution forecast fields for the 3-km-high Mount Etna volcano. The simulated precipitable-water field is validated against that retrieved from the Medium-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) radiometer on the Envisat satellite, which has a resolution of 300 m. Two case studies, one from winter (November 24, 2004) and one from summer (June 25, 2005), show that the mismatch between the model and the MERIS fields ( rms = 1.1 and 1.6 mm, respectively) is small. One of the main potential sources of error in the models is the timing of the WV field simulation. We show that long-wavelength upper tropospheric troughs of low WV could be identified in both the model output and Meteosat WV imagery for the November 24, 2004 case and used to choose the best time of model output.