Regional intercomparisons of General Circulation Model predictions and historical climate data: CO/sub 2/

Technical Report · Fri Apr 01 04:00:00 EST 1988

OSTI ID:7243184

Grotch, S L

This study is a detailed intercomparsion of the results produced by four different General Circulation Models (GCMs) that have been used to project the climatic consequences of a doubling of the atmospheric CO/sub 2/ concentration. The results for the models developed by groups at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCARCCM, Washington and Meehl, 1984), the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of NOAA (GFDL, Manable and Wetherald, 1987), and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies of NASA (GISS, Hansen, et al., 1984) have been described by Schlesinger and Mitchell (1985) in the DOE state-of-art (SOA) report, ''Projecting the Climatic Effects of Increasing Carbon Dioxide''. The fourth model examined here is the Oregon State University GCM (OSU, Schlesinger, 1986), results for which did not become available until after publication of the SOA. We have chosen to examine only two model variables here: (1) surface air temperature, and (2) precipation. We consider these variables for both seasonally and annually averaged periods, for both the current climatic conditions and the predicted equilibrium changes after a doubling of the CO/sub 2/ concentration. The major conclusion of this study is that, although the models often agree well comparing seasonal or annual averages over the large areas, substanial disagreements become apparent as the spatial extent is reduced, particularly when detailed regional distributions are examined. At scales below continental, the correlations observed between different model predictions are often very poor, particularly for land gridpoints during the Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer, with differences of as much as 5/degree/C between models and observations and between one model and another over relatively large areas.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 7243184
• Report Number(s): DOE/NBB-0084; ON: DE88010416
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

500200* -- Environment
Atmospheric-- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport-- (-1989)
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
AMBIENT TEMPERATURE
ATMOSPHERIC PRECIPITATIONS
CARBON COMPOUNDS
CARBON DIOXIDE
CARBON OXIDES
CHALCOGENIDES
CLIMATE MODELS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
GENERAL CIRCULATION MODELS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS