Marie-Estelle Demory

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...

Investigating Global Tropical Cyclone Activity with a Hierarchy of AGCMs: The Role of Model Resolution

AbstractThe ability to run general circulation models (GCMs) at ever-higher horizontal resolutions has meant that tropical cyclone simulations are increasingly credible. A hierarchy of atmosphere-only GCMs, based on the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model version 1 (HadGEM1) with horizontal resolution increasing from approximately 270 to 60 km at 50°N, is used to systematically investigate the impact of spatial resolution on the simulation of global tropical cyclone activity, independent of model formulation. Tropical cyclones are extracted from ensemble simulations and reanalyses of comparable resolutions using a feature-tracking algorithm. Resolution is critical for simulating storm intensity and convergence to observed storm intensities is not achieved with the model hierarchy. Resolution is less critical for simulating the annual number of tropical cyclones and their geographical distribution, which are well captured at resolutions of 135 km or higher, particularly for Northern Hemisphere basins....

Impact of Resolution on the Tropical Pacific Circulation in a Matrix of Coupled Models

Results are presented from a matrix of coupled model integrations, using atmosphere resolutions of 135 and 90 km, and ocean resolutions of 1° and 1/3°, to study the impact of resolution on simulated climate. The mean state of the tropical Pacific is found to be improved in the models with a higher ocean resolution. Such an improved mean state arises from the development of tropical instability waves, which are poorly resolved at low resolution; these waves reduce the equatorial cold tongue bias. The improved ocean state also allows for a better simulation of the atmospheric Walker circulation. Several sensitivity studies have been performed to further understand the processes involved in the different component models. Significantly decreasing the horizontal momentum dissipation in the coupled model with the lower-resolution ocean has benefits for the mean tropical Pacific climate, but decreases model stability. Increasing the momentum dissipation in the coupled model with the higher-resolution ocean degrades the simulation toward that of the lower-resolution ocean. These results suggest that enhanced ocean model resolution can have important benefits for the climatology of both the atmosphere and ocean components of the coupled model, and that some of these benefits may be achievable at lower ocean resolution, if the model formulation allows.

Tropical Cyclones in the UPSCALE Ensemble of High-Resolution Global Climate Models*

AbstractThe U.K. on Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) Weather-Resolving Simulations of Climate for Global Environmental Risk (UPSCALE) project, using PRACE resources, constructed and ran an ensemble of atmosphere-only global climate model simulations, using the Met Office Unified Model Global Atmosphere 3 (GA3) configuration. Each simulation is 27 years in length for both the present climate and an end-of-century future climate, at resolutions of N96 (130 km), N216 (60 km), and N512 (25 km), in order to study the impact of model resolution on high-impact climate features such as tropical cyclones. Increased model resolution is found to improve the simulated frequency of explicitly tracked tropical cyclones, and correlations of interannual variability in the North Atlantic and northwestern Pacific lie between 0.6 and 0.75. Improvements in the deficit of genesis in the eastern North Atlantic as resolution increases appear to be related to the representation of African easterly waves and t...

Simulation of Late-Twenty-First-Century Changes in Wintertime Atmospheric Circulation over Europe Due to Anthropogenic Causes

Abstract Evidence is presented, based on an ensemble of climate change scenarios performed with a global general circulation model of the atmosphere with high horizontal resolution over Europe, to suggest that the end-of-century anthropogenic climate change over the North Atlantic–European region strongly projects onto the positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation during wintertime. It is reflected in a doubling of the residence frequency of the climate system in the associated circulation regime, in agreement with the nonlinear climate perspective. The strong increase in the amplitude of the response, compared to coarse-resolution coupled model studies, suggests that improved model representation of regional climate is needed to achieve more reliable projections of anthropogenic climate change on European climate.

The resolution sensitivity of the South Asian monsoon and Indo-Pacific in a global 0.35° AGCM

The South Asian monsoon is one of the most significant manifestations of the seasonal cycle. It directly impacts nearly one third of the world’s population and also has substantial global influence. Using 27-year integrations of a high-resolution atmospheric general circulation model (Met Office Unified Model), we study changes in South Asian monsoon precipitation and circulation when horizontal resolution is increased from approximately 200–40 km at the equator (N96–N512, 1.9°–0.35°). The high resolution, integration length and ensemble size of the dataset make this the most extensive dataset used to evaluate the resolution sensitivity of the South Asian monsoon to date. We find a consistent pattern of JJAS precipitation and circulation changes as resolution increases, which include a slight increase in precipitation over peninsular India, changes in Indian and Indochinese orographic rain bands, increasing wind speeds in the Somali Jet, increasing precipitation over the Maritime Continent islands and decreasing precipitation over the northern Maritime Continent seas. To diagnose which resolution-related processes cause these changes, we compare them to published sensitivity experiments that change regional orography and coastlines. Our analysis indicates that improved resolution of the East African Highlands results in the improved representation of the Somali Jet and further suggests that improved resolution of orography over Indochina and the Maritime Continent results in more precipitation over the Maritime Continent islands at the expense of reduced precipitation further north. We also evaluate the resolution sensitivity of monsoon depressions and lows, which contribute more precipitation over northeast India at higher resolution. We conclude that while increasing resolution at these scales does not solve the many monsoon biases that exist in GCMs, it has a number of small, beneficial impacts.

High-resolution global climate modelling: the UPSCALE project, a large-simulation campaign

The UPSCALE (UK on PRACE: weatherresolving Simulations of Climate for globAL Environmental risk) project constructed and ran an ensemble of HadGEM3 (Hadley Centre Global Environment Model 3) atmosphereonly global climate simulations over the period 1985–2011, at resolutions of N512 (25 km), N216 (60 km) and N96 (130 km) as used in current global weather forecasting, seasonal prediction and climate modelling respectively. Alongside these present climate simulations a parallel ensemble looking at extremes of future climate was run, using a timeslice methodology to consider conditions at the end of this century. These simulations were primarily performed using a 144 million core hour, single year grant of computing time from PRACE (the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) in 2012, with additional resources supplied by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Met Office. Almost 400 terabytes of simulation data were generated on the HERMIT supercomputer at the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), and transferred to the JASMIN super-data cluster provided by the Science and Technology Facilities Council Centre for Data Archival (STFC CEDA) for analysis and storage. In this paper we describe the implementation of the project, present the technical challenges in terms of optimisation, data output, transfer and storage that such a project involves and include details of the model configuration and the composition of the UPSCALE data set. This data set is available for scientific analysis to allow assessment of the value of model resolution in both present and potential future climate conditions.

The sensitivity of the tropical circulation and Maritime Continent precipitation to climate model resolution

The dependence of the annual mean tropical precipitation on horizontal resolution is investigated in the atmospheric version of the Hadley Centre General Environment Model. Reducing the grid spacing from about 350 km to about 110 km improves the precipitation distribution in most of the tropics. In particular, characteristic dry biases over South and Southeast Asia including the Maritime Continent as well as wet biases over the western tropical oceans are reduced. The annual-mean precipitation bias is reduced by about one third over the Maritime Continent and the neighbouring ocean basins associated with it via the Walker circulation. Sensitivity experiments show that much of the improvement with resolution in the Maritime Continent region is due to the specification of better resolved surface boundary conditions (land fraction, soil and vegetation parameters) at the higher resolution. It is shown that in particular the formulation of the coastal tiling scheme may cause resolution sensitivity of the mean simulated climate. The improvement in the tropical mean precipitation in this region is not primarily associated with the better representation of orography at the higher resolution, nor with changes in the eddy transport of moisture. Sizeable sensitivity to changes in the surface fields may be one of the reasons for the large variation of the mean tropical precipitation distribution seen across climate models.

Hydrological Cycles over the Congo and Upper Blue Nile Basins: Evaluation of General Circulation Model Simulations and Reanalysis Products

The simulations and predictions of the hydrological cycle by general circulation models (GCMs) are characterized by a significant degree of uncertainty. This uncertainty is reflected in the range of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) GCM predictions of future changes in the hydrological cycle, particularly over major African basins. The confidence in GCM predictions can be increased by evaluating different GCMs, identifying those models that succeed in simulating the hydrological cycle under current climate conditions, and using them for climate change studies. Reanalyses are often used to validate GCMs, but they also suffer from an inaccurate representation of the hydrological cycle. In this study, the aim is to identify GCMs and reanalyses’ products that provide a realistic representation of the hydrological cycle over the Congo and upper Blue Nile (UBN) basins. Atmospheric and soil water balance constraints are employed to evaluate the models’ ability to reproduce the observed streamflow, which is the most accurate measurement of the hydrological cycle. Among the ECMWF Interim Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim), NCEP‐ NCAR reanalysis, and 40-yr ECWMF Re-Analysis (ERA-40), ERA-Interim shows the best performance over these basins: it balances the water budgets and accurately represents the seasonal cycle of the hydrological variables. The authors find that most GCMs used by the IPCC overestimate the hydrological cycle compared to observations. They observe some improvement in the simulated hydrological cycle with increased horizontal resolution, which suggests that some of the high-resolution GCMs are better suited for climate change studies over Africa.

The Resolution Sensitivity of Northern Hemisphere Blocking in Four 25-km Atmospheric Global Circulation Models

AbstractThe aim of this study is to investigate if the representation of Northern Hemisphere blocking is sensitive to resolution in current-generation atmospheric global circulation models (AGCMs). An evaluation is conducted of how well atmospheric blocking is represented in four AGCMs whose horizontal resolution is increased from a grid spacing of more than 100 km to about 25 km. It is shown that Euro-Atlantic blocking is simulated overall more credibly at higher resolution (i.e., in better agreement with a 50-yr reference blocking climatology created from the reanalyses ERA-40 and ERA-Interim). The improvement seen with resolution depends on the season and to some extent on the model considered. Euro-Atlantic blocking is simulated more realistically at higher resolution in winter, spring, and autumn, and robustly so across the model ensemble. The improvement in spring is larger than that in winter and autumn. Summer blocking is found to be better simulated at higher resolution by one model only, with li...