The carbon cycle in the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS-ESM1) – Part 1: Model description and pre-industrial simulation

Law, Rachel M.; Ziehn, Tilo; Matear, Richard J.; Lenton, Andrew; Chamberlain, Matthew A.; Stevens, Lauren E.; Wang, Ying-Ping; Srbinovsky, Jhan; Bi, Daohua; Yan, Hailin; Vohralik, Peter F.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2567-2017

Articles | Volume 10, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2567-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

The Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator:...

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2567-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 7

Model description paper

|

06 Jul 2017

Model description paper |

| 06 Jul 2017

The carbon cycle in the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS-ESM1) – Part 1: Model description and pre-industrial simulation

Rachel M. Law, Tilo Ziehn, Richard J. Matear, Andrew Lenton, Matthew A. Chamberlain, Lauren E. Stevens, Ying-Ping Wang, Jhan Srbinovsky, Daohua Bi, Hailin Yan, and Peter F. Vohralik

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Final revised paper (published on 06 Jul 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 18 Sep 2015)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C2505: 'Review for: The carbon cycle in the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS-ESM1)-Part 1: Model description and preindustrial simulation', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Oct 2015
- AC C4143: 'Response to review', Rachel Law, 09 Mar 2016
RC C3702: 'Review of ACCESS-ESM1 Model description and pre-industrial simulation', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Jan 2016
- AC C4252: 'Response to review 2', Rachel Law, 18 Mar 2016
RC C4270: 'Review 3', Anonymous Referee #3, 18 Mar 2016
- AC C4257: 'Response to review 3', Rachel Law, 18 Mar 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Rachel Law on behalf of the Authors (21 Apr 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 May 2016) by Andy Ridgwell

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (24 May 2016)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (17 Oct 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I have now read the revised version of Law et al., as well as the response of the authors to the earlier referees’ comments. In addition, I have read the companion paper of Ziehn et al., also in discussion in GMD.
I’d like to start by stating that the material presented in these 2 paper (description of the model, comparison to observations, intercomparison to other CMIP5 models) is clearly very well suited for GMD, and could indeed be presented in 2 companion papers, as proposed here by the team of authors. In addition, I’d like to assert that concentration-driven simulations are suitable enough to evaluate the carbon cycle components of an ESM. To my view, it is not a shortcoming not to have emission-driven simulations.

That said, I have a few reservations that prevents me to recommend acceptation of the present manuscript (Law et al.) in its actual form.
Whereas I find Ziehn et al. quite well balanced between ocean and land carbon cycle components, it is clearly not the case for the Law et al. manuscript. Here are a few obvious examples :
- a clear focus on evaluation for the ocean vs. sensitivity tests / variability for the land carbon.
- as well, the analysis of the quasi-equilibirum for the carbon cycle components is done very differently for the land and for the ocean.
- on a a less important note perharps, the figures are also not homogeneous at all between the land / and ocean sections.

Overall, this gives the impression of a merge (ocean + land) without much smoothing of 2 sub-studies.

If the authors go on with 2 companion papers, one focused on pre-industrial, the other one on the historical simulation, I would clearly recommend to revise the first one by Law et al. to propose an homogenized approach of the ocean and land carbon cycle. The evaluation part could be moved in the second paper (historical + evaluation), the first paper (Law et al.) focusing on a detailed description of the model, on the equilibration of the carbon cycle, and on sensitivity tests / natural variability.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (17 Oct 2016) by Didier Roche

AR by Rachel Law on behalf of the Authors (25 Jan 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 Feb 2017) by Didier Roche

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (26 Apr 2017)

ED: Publish as is (10 May 2017) by Didier Roche

AR by Rachel Law on behalf of the Authors (12 May 2017)

Short summary

The paper describes a version of the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator that has been enabled to simulate the carbon cycle, which is designated ACCESS-ESM1. The model performance for pre-industrial conditions is assessed and land and ocean carbon fluxes are found to be simulated realistically.