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Title: Impacts of cloud superparameterization on projected daily rainfall intensity climate changes in multiple versions of the Community Earth System Model

Journal Article · · Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2016MS000715· OSTI ID:1330398
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [2];  [2]
  1. Department of Earth System Science University of California Irvine California USA
  2. Department of Atmospheric Science Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado USA
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Abstract Changes in the character of rainfall are assessed using a holistic set of statistics based on rainfall frequency and amount distributions in climate change experiments with three conventional and superparameterized versions of the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM and SPCAM). Previous work has shown that high‐order statistics of present‐day rainfall intensity are significantly improved with superparameterization, especially in regions of tropical convection. Globally, the two modeling approaches project a similar future increase in mean rainfall, especially across the Inter‐Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and at high latitudes, but over land, SPCAM predicts a smaller mean change than CAM. Changes in high‐order statistics are similar at high latitudes in the two models but diverge at lower latitudes. In the tropics, SPCAM projects a large intensification of moderate and extreme rain rates in regions of organized convection associated with the Madden Julian Oscillation, ITCZ, monsoons, and tropical waves. In contrast, this signal is missing in all versions of CAM, which are found to be prone to predicting increases in the amount but not intensity of moderate rates. Predictions from SPCAM exhibit a scale‐insensitive behavior with little dependence on horizontal resolution for extreme rates, while lower resolution (∼2°) versions of CAM are not able to capture the response simulated with higher resolution (∼1°). Moderate rain rates analyzed by the “amount mode” and “amount median” are found to be especially telling as a diagnostic for evaluating climate model performance and tracing future changes in rainfall statistics to tropical wave modes in SPCAM.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
DE‐SC0012152; DE‐SC0012548; SC0012152
OSTI ID:
1330398
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1330470; OSTI ID: 1360138
Journal Information:
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Journal Name: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems Vol. 8 Journal Issue: 4; ISSN 1942-2466
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 21 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
climate change
extreme precipitation
rainfall intensity
community atmosphere model
superparameterization