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Title: The Implementation of Framework for Improvement by Vertical Enhancement Into Energy Exascale Earth System Model

Journal Article · · Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]
  1. Atmospheric, Earth, and Energy Division Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livermore CA USA
  2. Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences University of Colorado Boulder CO USA, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories Chemical Sciences Laboratory Boulder CO USA

Abstract The low cloud bias in global climate models (GCMs) remains an unsolved problem. Coarse vertical resolution in GCMs has been suggested to be a significant cause of low cloud bias because planetary boundary layer parameterizations cannot resolve sharp temperature and moisture gradients often found at the top of subtropical stratocumulus layers. This work aims to ameliorate the low cloud problem by implementing a new computational method, the Framework for Improvement by Vertical Enhancement (FIVE), into the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). Three physics schemes representing microphysics, radiation, and turbulence as well as vertical advection are interfaced to vertically enhanced physics (VEP), which allows for these processes to be computed on a higher vertical resolution grid compared to the rest of the E3SM model. We demonstrate the better representation of subtropical boundary layer clouds with FIVE while limiting additional computational cost from the increased number of levels. When the vertical resolution approaches the large eddy simulation‐like vertical resolution in VEP, the climatological low cloud amount shows a significant increase of more than 30% in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. Using FIVE to improve the representation of low‐level clouds does not come with any negative side effects associated with the simulation of mid‐ and high‐level cloud and precipitation, that can occur when running the full model at higher vertical resolution.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-07NA27344; SC0018650
OSTI ID:
1797607
Report Number(s):
LLNL-JRNL--810691; e2020MS002240
Journal Information:
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Journal Name: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 13; ISSN 1942-2466
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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