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Title: Energy considerations in the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM)

Journal Article · · Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2015MS000448· OSTI ID:1214705
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [4]
  1. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
  2. Uni Research and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen (Norway)
  3. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States); Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
  4. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
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An error in the energy formulation in the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) is identified and corrected. Ten year AMIP simulations are compared using the correct and incorrect energy formulations. Statistics of selected primary variables all indicate physically insignificant differences between the simulations, comparable to differences with simulations initialized with rounding sized perturbations. The two simulations are so similar mainly because of an inconsistency in the application of the incorrect energy formulation in the original CAM. CAM used the erroneous energy form to determine the states passed between the parameterizations, but used a form related to the correct formulation for the state passed from the parameterizations to the dynamical core. If the incorrect form is also used to determine the state passed to the dynamical core the simulations are significantly different. In addition, CAM uses the incorrect form for the global energy fixer, but that seems to be less important. The difference of the magnitude of the fixers using the correct and incorrect energy definitions is very small.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC04-94AL85000
OSTI ID:
1214705
Journal Information:
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Journal Name: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems; ISSN 1942-2466
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 17 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (7)

Toward a Complete Model of the Climate System book January 2000
Heating and Kinetic Energy Dissipation in the NCAR Community Atmosphere Model journal December 2003
Various Vertical Coordinate Systems Used for Numerical Weather Prediction journal July 1974
A Spectral General Circulation Model Using a Piecewise-Constant Finite-Element Representation on a Hybrid Vertical Coordinate System journal January 1990
Conservation of Mass and Energy for the Moist Atmospheric Primitive Equations on Unstructured Grids book January 2011
Time-Split versus Process-Split Coupling of Parameterizations and Dynamical Core journal August 2002
Two Dynamical Core Formulation Flaws Exposed by a Baroclinic Instability Test Case journal February 2009

Cited By (6)

A Methodology for Anomaly Coupling in Climate Simulation journal August 2018
Description and evaluation of NorESM1-F: a fast version of the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) journal January 2019
The path to CAM6: coupled simulations with CAM5.4 and CAM5.5 journal January 2018
The tropical rain belts with an annual cycle and a continent model intercomparison project: TRACMIP text January 2016
Description and evaluation of NorESM1-F: A fast version of the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) posted_content September 2018
The tropical rain belts with an annual cycle and a continent model intercomparison project: TRACMIP text January 2016

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES