Causes and Implications of Persistent Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Biases in Earth System Models

Journal Article · Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2014 · Journal of Geophysical Research. Biogeosciences

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2013JG002381· OSTI ID:1126524

Hoffman, Forrest M ^[1]; Randerson, James T. ^[2]; Arora, Vivek K. ^[3]; Bao, Qing ^[4]; Cadule, Patricia ^[5]; Ji, Duoying ^[6]; Jones, Chris D. ^[7]; Kawamiya, Michio ^[8]; Khatiwala, Samar ^[9]; Lindsay, Keith ^[10]; Obata, Atsushi ^[11]; Shevliakova, Elena ^[12]; Six, Katharina D. ^[13]; Tjiputra, Jerry F. ^[14]; Volodin, Evgeny M. ^[15]; Wu, Tongwen ^[16]

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1. ORNL
2. University of California, Irvine
3. Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Meteorological Service of Canada
4. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
5. Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environment
6. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing
7. Hadley Centre, U.K. Met Office
8. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)
9. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY
10. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
11. Meteorological Research Institute, Japan
12. Princeton University
13. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany
14. Uni Climate, Uni Research
15. Institute of Numerical Mathematics, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow
16. China Meteorological Administration (CMA), Beijing

The strength of feedbacks between a changing climate and future CO2 concentrations are uncertain and difficult to predict using Earth System Models (ESMs). We analyzed emission-driven simulations--in which atmospheric CO2 levels were computed prognostically--for historical (1850-2005) and future periods (RCP 8.5 for 2006-2100) produced by 15 ESMs for the Fifth Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Comparison of ESM prognostic atmospheric CO2 over the historical period with observations indicated that ESMs, on average, had a small positive bias in predictions of contemporary atmospheric CO2. Weak ocean carbon uptake in many ESMs contributed to this bias, based on comparisons with observations of ocean and atmospheric anthropogenic carbon inventories. We found a significant linear relationship between contemporary atmospheric CO2 biases and future CO2 levels for the multi-model ensemble. We used this relationship to create a contemporary CO2 tuned model (CCTM) estimate of the atmospheric CO2 trajectory for the 21st century. The CCTM yielded CO2 estimates of 600 {plus minus} 14 ppm at 2060 and 947 {plus minus} 35 ppm at 2100, which were 21 ppm and 32 ppm below the multi-model mean during these two time periods. Using this emergent constraint approach, the likely ranges of future atmospheric CO2, CO2-induced radiative forcing, and CO2-induced temperature increases for the RCP 8.5 scenario were considerably narrowed compared to estimates from the full ESM ensemble. Our analysis provided evidence that much of the model-to-model variation in projected CO2 during the 21st century was tied to biases that existed during the observational era, and that model differences in the representation of concentration-carbon feedbacks and other slowly changing carbon cycle processes appear to be the primary driver of this variability. By improving models to more closely match the long-term time series of CO2 from Mauna Loa, our analysis suggests uncertainties in future climate projections can be reduced.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1126524
• Journal Information: Journal of Geophysical Research. Biogeosciences, Vol. 119, Issue 2; ISSN 2169-8953
• Publisher: American Geophysical Union
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English