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Title: An Idealized Test of the Response of the Community Atmosphere Model to Near‐Grid‐Scale Forcing Across Hydrostatic Resolutions

Journal Article · · Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2017MS001078· OSTI ID:1422638
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook NY USA
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Abstract A set of idealized experiments are developed using the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) to understand the vertical velocity response to reductions in forcing scale that is known to occur when the horizontal resolution of the model is increased. The test consists of a set of rising bubble experiments, in which the horizontal radius of the bubble and the model grid spacing are simultaneously reduced. The test is performed with moisture, through incorporating moist physics routines of varying complexity, although convection schemes are not considered. Results confirm that the vertical velocity in CAM is to first‐order, proportional to the inverse of the horizontal forcing scale, which is consistent with a scale analysis of the dry equations of motion. In contrast, experiments in which the coupling time step between the moist physics routines and the dynamical core (i.e., the “physics” time step) are relaxed back to more conventional values results in severely damped vertical motion at high resolution, degrading the scaling. A set of aqua‐planet simulations using different physics time steps are found to be consistent with the results of the idealized experiments.

Research Organization:
Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
DE‐SC0016605; SC0016605
OSTI ID:
1422638
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1422639; OSTI ID: 1511461
Journal Information:
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Journal Name: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems Vol. 10 Journal Issue: 2; ISSN 1942-2466
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 13 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
GCMs
horizontal resolution
idealized tests
cloud parameterizations