Articles | Volume 11, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-2273-2018
© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-2273-2018
© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Model description paper
| 
18 Jun 2018
Model description paper |
| 18 Jun 2018
| 18 Jun 2018
FAIR v1.3: a simple emissions-based impulse response and carbon cycle model
Christopher J. Smith
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Piers M. Forster
School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Myles Allen
Atmospheric Physics Department, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Nicholas Leach
Atmospheric Physics Department, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Richard J. Millar
College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Giovanni A. Passerello
School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Leighton A. Regayre
School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
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Piers M. Forster, Christopher J. Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Mathias Hauser, Aurélien Ribes, Debbie Rosen, Nathan Gillett, Matthew D. Palmer, Joeri Rogelj, Karina von Schuckmann, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Blair Trewin, Xuebin Zhang, Myles Allen, Robbie Andrew, Arlene Birt, Alex Borger, Tim Boyer, Jiddu A. Broersma, Lijing Cheng, Frank Dentener, Pierre Friedlingstein, José M. Gutiérrez, Johannes Gütschow, Bradley Hall, Masayoshi Ishii, Stuart Jenkins, Xin Lan, June-Yi Lee, Colin Morice, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel Killick, Jan C. Minx, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sophie Szopa, Peter Thorne, Robert Rohde, Maisa Rojas Corradi, Dominik Schumacher, Russell Vose, Kirsten Zickfeld, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
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Johannes Quaas, Hailing Jia, Chris Smith, Anna Lea Albright, Wenche Aas, Nicolas Bellouin, Olivier Boucher, Marie Doutriaux-Boucher, Piers M. Forster, Daniel Grosvenor, Stuart Jenkins, Zbigniew Klimont, Norman G. Loeb, Xiaoyan Ma, Vaishali Naik, Fabien Paulot, Philip Stier, Martin Wild, Gunnar Myhre, and Michael Schulz
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Nicholas J. Leach, Stuart Jenkins, Zebedee Nicholls, Christopher J. Smith, John Lynch, Michelle Cain, Tristram Walsh, Bill Wu, Junichi Tsutsui, and Myles R. Allen
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Gillian D. Thornhill, William J. Collins, Ryan J. Kramer, Dirk Olivié, Ragnhild B. Skeie, Fiona M. O'Connor, Nathan Luke Abraham, Ramiro Checa-Garcia, Susanne E. Bauer, Makoto Deushi, Louisa K. Emmons, Piers M. Forster, Larry W. Horowitz, Ben Johnson, James Keeble, Jean-Francois Lamarque, Martine Michou, Michael J. Mills, Jane P. Mulcahy, Gunnar Myhre, Pierre Nabat, Vaishali Naik, Naga Oshima, Michael Schulz, Christopher J. Smith, Toshihiko Takemura, Simone Tilmes, Tongwen Wu, Guang Zeng, and Jie Zhang
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 853–874, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-853-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-853-2021, 2021
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This paper is a study of how different constituents in the atmosphere, such as aerosols and gases like methane and ozone, affect the energy balance in the atmosphere. Different climate models were run using the same inputs to allow an easy comparison of the results and to understand where the models differ. We found the effect of aerosols is to reduce warming in the atmosphere, but this effect varies between models. Reactions between gases are also important in affecting climate.
Zebedee R. J. Nicholls, Malte Meinshausen, Jared Lewis, Robert Gieseke, Dietmar Dommenget, Kalyn Dorheim, Chen-Shuo Fan, Jan S. Fuglestvedt, Thomas Gasser, Ulrich Golüke, Philip Goodwin, Corinne Hartin, Austin P. Hope, Elmar Kriegler, Nicholas J. Leach, Davide Marchegiani, Laura A. McBride, Yann Quilcaille, Joeri Rogelj, Ross J. Salawitch, Bjørn H. Samset, Marit Sandstad, Alexey N. Shiklomanov, Ragnhild B. Skeie, Christopher J. Smith, Steve Smith, Katsumasa Tanaka, Junichi Tsutsui, and Zhiang Xie
Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 5175–5190, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-5175-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-5175-2020, 2020
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Computational limits mean that we cannot run our most comprehensive climate models for all applications of interest. In such cases, reduced complexity models (RCMs) are used. Here, researchers working on 15 different models present the first systematic community effort to evaluate and compare RCMs: the Reduced Complexity Model Intercomparison Project (RCMIP). Our research ensures that users of RCMs can more easily evaluate the strengths, weaknesses and limitations of their tools.
Christopher J. Smith, Ryan J. Kramer, and Adriana Sima
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2157–2168, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2157-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2157-2020, 2020
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Radiative kernels allow efficient diagnosis of climate feedbacks and radiative adjustments to an external forcing using standard climate model output. We present a radiative kernel derived from the UK Met Office's HadGEM3-GA7.1 climate model. We show that a highly resolved stratosphere is important for correctly diagnosing the stratospheric temperature adjustment to greenhouse gas forcings and, by extension, the instantaneous radiative forcing.
Christopher J. Smith, Ryan J. Kramer, Gunnar Myhre, Kari Alterskjær, William Collins, Adriana Sima, Olivier Boucher, Jean-Louis Dufresne, Pierre Nabat, Martine Michou, Seiji Yukimoto, Jason Cole, David Paynter, Hideo Shiogama, Fiona M. O'Connor, Eddy Robertson, Andy Wiltshire, Timothy Andrews, Cécile Hannay, Ron Miller, Larissa Nazarenko, Alf Kirkevåg, Dirk Olivié, Stephanie Fiedler, Anna Lewinschal, Chloe Mackallah, Martin Dix, Robert Pincus, and Piers M. Forster
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 9591–9618, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9591-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9591-2020, 2020
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Nicolas Bellouin, Will Davies, Keith P. Shine, Johannes Quaas, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Piers M. Forster, Chris Smith, Lindsay Lee, Leighton Regayre, Guy Brasseur, Natalia Sudarchikova, Idir Bouarar, Olivier Boucher, and Gunnar Myhre
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Nicholas James Leach, Zebedee Nicholls, Stuart Jenkins, Christopher J. Smith, John Lynch, Michelle Cain, Bill Wu, Junichi Tsutsui, and Myles R. Allen
Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2019-379, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2019-379, 2020
Revised manuscript not accepted
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GIR is a simple climate model designed to make exploration of the impact of greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions on the climate easy and understandable for its users. It uses an intuitive input and output structure, and the model is itself a set of only six equations. This lends the model to applications such as teaching, or as a lowest common denominator model between groups in large-scale climate assessments. It could also be used to investigate more complex models through emulation.
Tamás Kovács, Wuhu Feng, Anna Totterdill, John M. C. Plane, Sandip Dhomse, Juan Carlos Gómez-Martín, Gabriele P. Stiller, Florian J. Haenel, Christopher Smith, Piers M. Forster, Rolando R. García, Daniel R. Marsh, and Martyn P. Chipperfield
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 883–898, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-883-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-883-2017, 2017
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Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a very potent greenhouse gas, which is present in the atmosphere only through its industrial use, for example as an electrical insulator. To estimate accurately the impact of SF6 emissions on climate we need to know how long it persists in the atmosphere before being removed. Previous estimates of the SF6 lifetime indicate a large degree of uncertainty. Here we use a detailed atmospheric model to calculate a current best estimate of the SF6 lifetime.
Weiyu Zhang, Paul R. Field, Kwinten Van Weverberg, Piers M. Forster, Cyril J. Morcrette, and Alexandru Rap
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2045, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2045, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP).
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Contrail cirrus is the largest, yet the most uncertain, aviation climate impact term. A newly implemented contrail cirrus scheme in a double-moment cloud microphysics scheme in climate model realistically reproduces the contrail evolution and provides regional forcing estimates within the range reported by other models. The work highlights the importance of initial contrail characteristics and the need for detailed cloud particle representations in climate model contrail simulations.
Piers M. Forster, Chris Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Christophe Cassou, Mathias Hauser, Zeke Hausfather, June-Yi Lee, Matthew D. Palmer, Karina von Schuckmann, Aimée B. A. Slangen, Sophie Szopa, Blair Trewin, Jeongeun Yun, Nathan P. Gillett, Stuart Jenkins, H. Damon Matthews, Krishnan Raghavan, Aurélien Ribes, Joeri Rogelj, Debbie Rosen, Xuebin Zhang, Myles Allen, Lara Aleluia Reis, Robbie M. Andrew, Richard A. Betts, Alex Borger, Jiddu A. Broersma, Samantha N. Burgess, Lijing Cheng, Pierre Friedlingstein, Catia M. Domingues, Marco Gambarini, Thomas Gasser, Johannes Gütschow, Masayoshi Ishii, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel E. Killick, Paul B. Krummel, Aurélien Liné, Didier P. Monselesan, Colin Morice, Jens Mühle, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Jan C. Minx, Matthew Rigby, Robert Rohde, Abhishek Savita, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Peter Thorne, Christopher Wells, Luke M. Western, Guido R. van der Werf, Susan E. Wijffels, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-250, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-250, 2025
Preprint under review for ESSD
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In a rapidly changing climate, evidence-based decision-making benefits from up-to-date and timely information. Here we compile monitoring datasets to track real-world changes over time. To make our work relevant to policy makers, we follow methods from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Human activities are increasing the Earth's energy imbalance and driving faster sea-level rise compared to the IPCC assessment.
William Lamb, Robbie Andrew, Matthew Jones, Zebedee Nicholls, Glen Peters, Chris Smith, Marielle Saunois, Giacomo Grassi, Julia Pongratz, Steven Smith, Francesco Tubiello, Monica Crippa, Matthew Gidden, Pierre Friedlingstein, Jan Minx, and Piers Forster
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-188, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-188, 2025
Preprint under review for ESSD
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This study explores why global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions estimates vary. Key reasons include different coverage of gases and sectors, varying definitions of anthropogenic land use change emissions, and the Paris Agreement not covering all emission sources. The study highlights three main ways emissions data is reported, each with different objectives and resulting in varying global emission totals. It emphasizes the need for transparency in choosing datasets and setting assessment scopes.
Camilla Mathison, Eleanor J. Burke, Gregory Munday, Chris D. Jones, Chris J. Smith, Norman J. Steinert, Andy J. Wiltshire, Chris Huntingford, Eszter Kovacs, Laila K. Gohar, Rebecca M. Varney, and Douglas McNeall
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1785–1808, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1785-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1785-2025, 2025
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We present PRIME (Probabilistic Regional Impacts from Model patterns and Emissions), which is designed to take new emissions scenarios and rapidly provide regional impact information. PRIME allows large ensembles to be run on multi-centennial timescales, including the analysis of many important variables for impact assessments. Our evaluation shows that PRIME reproduces the climate response for known scenarios, providing confidence in using PRIME for novel scenarios.
Xinyue Shao, Minghuai Wang, Xinyi Dong, Yaman Liu, Stephen R. Arnold, Leighton A. Regayre, Duseong S. Jo, Wenxiang Shen, Hao Wang, Man Yue, Jingyi Wang, Wenxin Zhang, and Ken S. Carslaw
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-4135, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-4135, 2025
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This study uses a global chemistry-climate model to investigate how new particle formation (NPF) from highly oxygenated organic molecules (HOMs) contributes to cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in both preindustrial (PI) and present-day (PD) environments, and its impact on aerosol indirect radiative forcing. The findings highlight the crucial role of biogenic emissions in climate change, providing new insights for carbon-neutral scenarios and enhancing understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions.
Detlef van Vuuren, Brian O'Neill, Claudia Tebaldi, Louise Chini, Pierre Friedlingstein, Tomoko Hasegawa, Keywan Riahi, Benjamin Sanderson, Bala Govindasamy, Nico Bauer, Veronika Eyring, Cheikh Fall, Katja Frieler, Matthew Gidden, Laila Gohar, Andrew Jones, Andrew King, Reto Knutti, Elmar Kriegler, Peter Lawrence, Chris Lennard, Jason Lowe, Camila Mathison, Shahbaz Mehmood, Luciana Prado, Qiang Zhang, Steven Rose, Alexander Ruane, Carl-Friederich Schleussner, Roland Seferian, Jana Sillmann, Chris Smith, Anna Sörensson, Swapna Panickal, Kaoru Tachiiri, Naomi Vaughan, Saritha Vishwanathan, Tokuta Yokohata, and Tilo Ziehn
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3765, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3765, 2025
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We propose a set of six plausible 21st century emission scenarios, and their multi-century extensions, that will be used by the international community of climate modeling centers to produce the next generation of climate projections. These projections will support climate, impact and mitigation researchers, provide information to practitioners to address future risks from climate change, and contribute to policymakers’ considerations of the trade-offs among various levels of mitigation.
Weiyu Zhang, Kwinten Van Weverberg, Cyril J. Morcrette, Wuhu Feng, Kalli Furtado, Paul R. Field, Chih-Chieh Chen, Andrew Gettelman, Piers M. Forster, Daniel R. Marsh, and Alexandru Rap
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 473–489, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-473-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-473-2025, 2025
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Contrail cirrus is the largest, but also most uncertain, contribution of aviation to global warming. We evaluate, for the first time, the impact of the host climate model on contrail cirrus properties. Substantial differences exist between contrail cirrus formation, persistence, and radiative effects in the host climate models. Reliable contrail cirrus simulations require advanced representation of cloud optical properties and microphysics, which should be better constrained by observations.
Hazel Mooney, Stephen Arnold, Benjamin Silver, Piers Forster, and Catherine Scott
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3895, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3895, 2025
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We simulate the potential changes in natural emissions of volatile gases from the land surface in the UK following afforestation from present-day woodland cover of 13 % to 19 % by 2050. We estimate present-day annual UK emissions of isoprene at 40 kt yr-1 and total monoterpenes at 46 kt yr-1, but emissions from afforested experiments show between a 4 % decrease and 131 % increase in emissions, explained by the variation in emissions activity between and within needleleaf and broadleaf trees.
Yona Silvy, Thomas L. Frölicher, Jens Terhaar, Fortunat Joos, Friedrich A. Burger, Fabrice Lacroix, Myles Allen, Raffaele Bernardello, Laurent Bopp, Victor Brovkin, Jonathan R. Buzan, Patricia Cadule, Martin Dix, John Dunne, Pierre Friedlingstein, Goran Georgievski, Tomohiro Hajima, Stuart Jenkins, Michio Kawamiya, Nancy Y. Kiang, Vladimir Lapin, Donghyun Lee, Paul Lerner, Nadine Mengis, Estela A. Monteiro, David Paynter, Glen P. Peters, Anastasia Romanou, Jörg Schwinger, Sarah Sparrow, Eric Stofferahn, Jerry Tjiputra, Etienne Tourigny, and Tilo Ziehn
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 1591–1628, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1591-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1591-2024, 2024
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The adaptive emission reduction approach is applied with Earth system models to generate temperature stabilization simulations. These simulations provide compatible emission pathways and budgets for a given warming level, uncovering uncertainty ranges previously missing in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project scenarios. These target-based emission-driven simulations offer a more coherent assessment across models for studying both the carbon cycle and its impacts under climate stabilization.
Magali Verkerk, Thomas J. Aubry, Christopher Smith, Peter O. Hopcroft, Michael Sigl, Jessica E. Tierney, Kevin Anchukaitis, Matthew Osman, Anja Schmidt, and Matthew Toohey
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3635, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3635, 2024
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Large volcanic eruptions can trigger global cooling, affecting human societies. Using ice-core records and simple climate model to simulate volcanic effect over the last 8500 years, we show that volcanic eruptions cool climate by 0.12 °C on average. By comparing model results with temperature recorded by tree rings over the last 1000 years, we demonstrate that our models can predict the large-scale cooling caused by volcanic eruptions, and can be used in case of large eruption in the future.
Chris Smith, Donald P. Cummins, Hege-Beate Fredriksen, Zebedee Nicholls, Malte Meinshausen, Myles Allen, Stuart Jenkins, Nicholas Leach, Camilla Mathison, and Antti-Ilari Partanen
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8569–8592, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8569-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8569-2024, 2024
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Climate projections are only useful if the underlying models that produce them are well calibrated and can reproduce observed climate change. We formalise a software package that calibrates the open-source FaIR simple climate model to full-complexity Earth system models. Observations, including historical warming, and assessments of key climate variables such as that of climate sensitivity are used to constrain the model output.
Benjamin M. Sanderson, Ben B. B. Booth, John Dunne, Veronika Eyring, Rosie A. Fisher, Pierre Friedlingstein, Matthew J. Gidden, Tomohiro Hajima, Chris D. Jones, Colin G. Jones, Andrew King, Charles D. Koven, David M. Lawrence, Jason Lowe, Nadine Mengis, Glen P. Peters, Joeri Rogelj, Chris Smith, Abigail C. Snyder, Isla R. Simpson, Abigail L. S. Swann, Claudia Tebaldi, Tatiana Ilyina, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Roland Séférian, Bjørn H. Samset, Detlef van Vuuren, and Sönke Zaehle
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8141–8172, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8141-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8141-2024, 2024
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We discuss how, in order to provide more relevant guidance for climate policy, coordinated climate experiments should adopt a greater focus on simulations where Earth system models are provided with carbon emissions from fossil fuels together with land use change instructions, rather than past approaches that have largely focused on experiments with prescribed atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. We discuss how these goals might be achieved in coordinated climate modeling experiments.
Benjamin Mark Sanderson, Victor Brovkin, Rosie Fisher, David Hohn, Tatiana Ilyina, Chris Jones, Torben Koenigk, Charles Koven, Hongmei Li, David Lawrence, Peter Lawrence, Spencer Liddicoat, Andrew Macdougall, Nadine Mengis, Zebedee Nicholls, Eleanor O'Rourke, Anastasia Romanou, Marit Sandstad, Jörg Schwinger, Roland Seferian, Lori Sentman, Isla Simpson, Chris Smith, Norman Steinert, Abigail Swann, Jerry Tjiputra, and Tilo Ziehn
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3356, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3356, 2024
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This study investigates how climate models warm in response to simplified carbon emissions trajectories, refining understanding of climate reversibility and commitment. Metrics are defined for warming response to cumulative emissions and for the cessation or ramp-down to net-zero and net-negative levels. Results indicate that previous concentration-driven experiments may have overstated zero emissions commitment due to emissions rates exceeding historical levels.
Xinyue Shao, Minghuai Wang, Xinyi Dong, Yaman Liu, Wenxiang Shen, Stephen R. Arnold, Leighton A. Regayre, Meinrat O. Andreae, Mira L. Pöhlker, Duseong S. Jo, Man Yue, and Ken S. Carslaw
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 11365–11389, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-11365-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-11365-2024, 2024
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Highly oxygenated organic molecules (HOMs) play an important role in atmospheric new particle formation (NPF). By semi-explicitly coupling the chemical mechanism of HOMs and a comprehensive nucleation scheme in a global climate model, the updated model shows better agreement with measurements of nucleation rate, growth rate, and NPF event frequency. Our results reveal that HOM-driven NPF leads to a considerable increase in particle and cloud condensation nuclei burden globally.
Robert J. Allen, Xueying Zhao, Cynthia A. Randles, Ryan J. Kramer, Bjørn H. Samset, and Christopher J. Smith
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 11207–11226, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-11207-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-11207-2024, 2024
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Present-day methane shortwave absorption mutes 28% (7–55%) of the surface warming associated with its longwave absorption. The precipitation increase associated with the longwave radiative effects of the present-day methane perturbation is also muted by shortwave absorption but not significantly so. Methane shortwave absorption also impacts the magnitude of its climate feedback parameter, largely through the cloud feedback.
Paul T. Griffiths, Laura J. Wilcox, Robert J. Allen, Vaishali Naik, Fiona M. O'Connor, Michael J. Prather, Alexander T. Archibald, Florence Brown, Makoto Deushi, William Collins, Stephanie Fiedler, Naga Oshima, Lee T. Murray, Christopher J. Smith, Steven T. Turnock, Duncan Watson-Parris, and Paul J. Young
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2528, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2528, 2024
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The Aerosol Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project (AerChemMIP) aimed to quantify the climate and air quality impacts of aerosols and chemically reactive gases. In this paper, we review its contribution to AR6, and the wider understanding of the role of these species in climate and climate change. We identify remaining challenges concluding with recommendations aimed to improve the utility and uptake of climate model data to address the role of short-lived climate forcers in the Earth system.
Malte Meinshausen, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Kathleen Beyer, Greg Bodeker, Olivier Boucher, Josep G. Canadell, John S. Daniel, Aïda Diongue-Niang, Fatima Driouech, Erich Fischer, Piers Forster, Michael Grose, Gerrit Hansen, Zeke Hausfather, Tatiana Ilyina, Jarmo S. Kikstra, Joyce Kimutai, Andrew D. King, June-Yi Lee, Chris Lennard, Tabea Lissner, Alexander Nauels, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Hans Pörtner, Joeri Rogelj, Maisa Rojas, Joyashree Roy, Bjørn H. Samset, Benjamin M. Sanderson, Roland Séférian, Sonia Seneviratne, Christopher J. Smith, Sophie Szopa, Adelle Thomas, Diana Urge-Vorsatz, Guus J. M. Velders, Tokuta Yokohata, Tilo Ziehn, and Zebedee Nicholls
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 4533–4559, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4533-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4533-2024, 2024
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The scientific community is considering new scenarios to succeed RCPs and SSPs for the next generation of Earth system model runs to project future climate change. To contribute to that effort, we reflect on relevant policy and scientific research questions and suggest categories for representative emission pathways. These categories are tailored to the Paris Agreement long-term temperature goal, high-risk outcomes in the absence of further climate policy and worlds “that could have been”.
Piers M. Forster, Chris Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Bradley Hall, Mathias Hauser, Aurélien Ribes, Debbie Rosen, Nathan P. Gillett, Matthew D. Palmer, Joeri Rogelj, Karina von Schuckmann, Blair Trewin, Myles Allen, Robbie Andrew, Richard A. Betts, Alex Borger, Tim Boyer, Jiddu A. Broersma, Carlo Buontempo, Samantha Burgess, Chiara Cagnazzo, Lijing Cheng, Pierre Friedlingstein, Andrew Gettelman, Johannes Gütschow, Masayoshi Ishii, Stuart Jenkins, Xin Lan, Colin Morice, Jens Mühle, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel E. Killick, Paul B. Krummel, Jan C. Minx, Gunnar Myhre, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Sophie Szopa, Peter Thorne, Mahesh V. M. Kovilakam, Elisa Majamäki, Jukka-Pekka Jalkanen, Margreet van Marle, Rachel M. Hoesly, Robert Rohde, Dominik Schumacher, Guido van der Werf, Russell Vose, Kirsten Zickfeld, Xuebin Zhang, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 2625–2658, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2625-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2625-2024, 2024
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This paper tracks some key indicators of global warming through time, from 1850 through to the end of 2023. It is designed to give an authoritative estimate of global warming to date and its causes. We find that in 2023, global warming reached 1.3 °C and is increasing at over 0.2 °C per decade. This is caused by all-time-high greenhouse gas emissions.
Bjorn Stevens, Stefan Adami, Tariq Ali, Hartwig Anzt, Zafer Aslan, Sabine Attinger, Jaana Bäck, Johanna Baehr, Peter Bauer, Natacha Bernier, Bob Bishop, Hendryk Bockelmann, Sandrine Bony, Guy Brasseur, David N. Bresch, Sean Breyer, Gilbert Brunet, Pier Luigi Buttigieg, Junji Cao, Christelle Castet, Yafang Cheng, Ayantika Dey Choudhury, Deborah Coen, Susanne Crewell, Atish Dabholkar, Qing Dai, Francisco Doblas-Reyes, Dale Durran, Ayoub El Gaidi, Charlie Ewen, Eleftheria Exarchou, Veronika Eyring, Florencia Falkinhoff, David Farrell, Piers M. Forster, Ariane Frassoni, Claudia Frauen, Oliver Fuhrer, Shahzad Gani, Edwin Gerber, Debra Goldfarb, Jens Grieger, Nicolas Gruber, Wilco Hazeleger, Rolf Herken, Chris Hewitt, Torsten Hoefler, Huang-Hsiung Hsu, Daniela Jacob, Alexandra Jahn, Christian Jakob, Thomas Jung, Christopher Kadow, In-Sik Kang, Sarah Kang, Karthik Kashinath, Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, Daniel Klocke, Uta Kloenne, Milan Klöwer, Chihiro Kodama, Stefan Kollet, Tobias Kölling, Jenni Kontkanen, Steve Kopp, Michal Koran, Markku Kulmala, Hanna Lappalainen, Fakhria Latifi, Bryan Lawrence, June Yi Lee, Quentin Lejeun, Christian Lessig, Chao Li, Thomas Lippert, Jürg Luterbacher, Pekka Manninen, Jochem Marotzke, Satoshi Matsouoka, Charlotte Merchant, Peter Messmer, Gero Michel, Kristel Michielsen, Tomoki Miyakawa, Jens Müller, Ramsha Munir, Sandeep Narayanasetti, Ousmane Ndiaye, Carlos Nobre, Achim Oberg, Riko Oki, Tuba Özkan-Haller, Tim Palmer, Stan Posey, Andreas Prein, Odessa Primus, Mike Pritchard, Julie Pullen, Dian Putrasahan, Johannes Quaas, Krishnan Raghavan, Venkatachalam Ramaswamy, Markus Rapp, Florian Rauser, Markus Reichstein, Aromar Revi, Sonakshi Saluja, Masaki Satoh, Vera Schemann, Sebastian Schemm, Christina Schnadt Poberaj, Thomas Schulthess, Cath Senior, Jagadish Shukla, Manmeet Singh, Julia Slingo, Adam Sobel, Silvina Solman, Jenna Spitzer, Philip Stier, Thomas Stocker, Sarah Strock, Hang Su, Petteri Taalas, John Taylor, Susann Tegtmeier, Georg Teutsch, Adrian Tompkins, Uwe Ulbrich, Pier-Luigi Vidale, Chien-Ming Wu, Hao Xu, Najibullah Zaki, Laure Zanna, Tianjun Zhou, and Florian Ziemen
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 2113–2122, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2113-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2113-2024, 2024
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To manage Earth in the Anthropocene, new tools, new institutions, and new forms of international cooperation will be required. Earth Virtualization Engines is proposed as an international federation of centers of excellence to empower all people to respond to the immense and urgent challenges posed by climate change.
Stephanie Fiedler, Vaishali Naik, Fiona M. O'Connor, Christopher J. Smith, Paul Griffiths, Ryan J. Kramer, Toshihiko Takemura, Robert J. Allen, Ulas Im, Matthew Kasoar, Angshuman Modak, Steven Turnock, Apostolos Voulgarakis, Duncan Watson-Parris, Daniel M. Westervelt, Laura J. Wilcox, Alcide Zhao, William J. Collins, Michael Schulz, Gunnar Myhre, and Piers M. Forster
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 2387–2417, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-2387-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-2387-2024, 2024
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Climate scientists want to better understand modern climate change. Thus, climate model experiments are performed and compared. The results of climate model experiments differ, as assessed in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report. This article gives insights into the challenges and outlines opportunities for further improving the understanding of climate change. It is based on views of a group of experts in atmospheric composition–climate interactions.
Robert E. Kopp, Gregory G. Garner, Tim H. J. Hermans, Shantenu Jha, Praveen Kumar, Alexander Reedy, Aimée B. A. Slangen, Matteo Turilli, Tamsin L. Edwards, Jonathan M. Gregory, George Koubbe, Anders Levermann, Andre Merzky, Sophie Nowicki, Matthew D. Palmer, and Chris Smith
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 7461–7489, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-7461-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-7461-2023, 2023
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Future sea-level rise projections exhibit multiple forms of uncertainty, all of which must be considered by scientific assessments intended to inform decision-making. The Framework for Assessing Changes To Sea-level (FACTS) is a new software package intended to support assessments of global mean, regional, and extreme sea-level rise. An early version of FACTS supported the development of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report sea-level projections.
Hamza Ahsan, Hailong Wang, Jingbo Wu, Mingxuan Wu, Steven J. Smith, Susanne Bauer, Harrison Suchyta, Dirk Olivié, Gunnar Myhre, Hitoshi Matsui, Huisheng Bian, Jean-François Lamarque, Ken Carslaw, Larry Horowitz, Leighton Regayre, Mian Chin, Michael Schulz, Ragnhild Bieltvedt Skeie, Toshihiko Takemura, and Vaishali Naik
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 14779–14799, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14779-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14779-2023, 2023
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We examine the impact of the assumed effective height of SO2 injection, SO2 and BC emission seasonality, and the assumed fraction of SO2 emissions injected as SO4 on climate and chemistry model results. We find that the SO2 injection height has a large impact on surface SO2 concentrations and, in some models, radiative flux. These assumptions are a
hiddensource of inter-model variability and may be leading to bias in some climate model results.
Olivia Linke, Johannes Quaas, Finja Baumer, Sebastian Becker, Jan Chylik, Sandro Dahlke, André Ehrlich, Dörthe Handorf, Christoph Jacobi, Heike Kalesse-Los, Luca Lelli, Sina Mehrdad, Roel A. J. Neggers, Johannes Riebold, Pablo Saavedra Garfias, Niklas Schnierstein, Matthew D. Shupe, Chris Smith, Gunnar Spreen, Baptiste Verneuil, Kameswara S. Vinjamuri, Marco Vountas, and Manfred Wendisch
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 9963–9992, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-9963-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-9963-2023, 2023
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Lapse rate feedback (LRF) is a major driver of the Arctic amplification (AA) of climate change. It arises because the warming is stronger at the surface than aloft. Several processes can affect the LRF in the Arctic, such as the omnipresent temperature inversion. Here, we compare multimodel climate simulations to Arctic-based observations from a large research consortium to broaden our understanding of these processes, find synergy among them, and constrain the Arctic LRF and AA.
Christopher D. Wells, Lawrence S. Jackson, Amanda C. Maycock, and Piers M. Forster
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 817–834, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-817-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-817-2023, 2023
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There are many possibilities for future emissions, with different impacts in different places. Complex models can study these impacts but take a long time to run, even on powerful computers. Simple methods can be used to reduce this time by estimating the complex model output, but these are not perfect. This study looks at the accuracy of one of these techniques, showing that there are limitations to its use, especially for low-emission future scenarios.
Mark D. Zelinka, Christopher J. Smith, Yi Qin, and Karl E. Taylor
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 8879–8898, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-8879-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-8879-2023, 2023
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The primary uncertainty in how strongly Earth's climate has been perturbed by human activities comes from the unknown radiative impact of aerosol changes. Accurately quantifying these forcings – and their sub-components – in climate models is crucial for understanding the past and future simulated climate. In this study we describe biases in previously published estimates of aerosol radiative forcing in climate models and provide corrected estimates along with code for users to compute them.
Leighton A. Regayre, Lucia Deaconu, Daniel P. Grosvenor, David M. H. Sexton, Christopher Symonds, Tom Langton, Duncan Watson-Paris, Jane P. Mulcahy, Kirsty J. Pringle, Mark Richardson, Jill S. Johnson, John W. Rostron, Hamish Gordon, Grenville Lister, Philip Stier, and Ken S. Carslaw
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 8749–8768, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-8749-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-8749-2023, 2023
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Aerosol forcing of Earth’s energy balance has persisted as a major cause of uncertainty in climate simulations over generations of climate model development. We show that structural deficiencies in a climate model are exposed by comprehensively exploring parametric uncertainty and that these deficiencies limit how much the model uncertainty can be reduced through observational constraint. This provides a future pathway towards building models with greater physical realism and lower uncertainty.
Piers M. Forster, Christopher J. Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Mathias Hauser, Aurélien Ribes, Debbie Rosen, Nathan Gillett, Matthew D. Palmer, Joeri Rogelj, Karina von Schuckmann, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Blair Trewin, Xuebin Zhang, Myles Allen, Robbie Andrew, Arlene Birt, Alex Borger, Tim Boyer, Jiddu A. Broersma, Lijing Cheng, Frank Dentener, Pierre Friedlingstein, José M. Gutiérrez, Johannes Gütschow, Bradley Hall, Masayoshi Ishii, Stuart Jenkins, Xin Lan, June-Yi Lee, Colin Morice, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel Killick, Jan C. Minx, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sophie Szopa, Peter Thorne, Robert Rohde, Maisa Rojas Corradi, Dominik Schumacher, Russell Vose, Kirsten Zickfeld, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 2295–2327, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2295-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2295-2023, 2023
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This is a critical decade for climate action, but there is no annual tracking of the level of human-induced warming. We build on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports that are authoritative but published infrequently to create a set of key global climate indicators that can be tracked through time. Our hope is that this becomes an important annual publication that policymakers, media, scientists and the public can refer to.
Jarmo S. Kikstra, Zebedee R. J. Nicholls, Christopher J. Smith, Jared Lewis, Robin D. Lamboll, Edward Byers, Marit Sandstad, Malte Meinshausen, Matthew J. Gidden, Joeri Rogelj, Elmar Kriegler, Glen P. Peters, Jan S. Fuglestvedt, Ragnhild B. Skeie, Bjørn H. Samset, Laura Wienpahl, Detlef P. van Vuuren, Kaj-Ivar van der Wijst, Alaa Al Khourdajie, Piers M. Forster, Andy Reisinger, Roberto Schaeffer, and Keywan Riahi
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 9075–9109, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-9075-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-9075-2022, 2022
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Assessing hundreds or thousands of emission scenarios in terms of their global mean temperature implications requires standardised procedures of infilling, harmonisation, and probabilistic temperature assessments. We here present the open-source
climate-assessmentworkflow that was used in the IPCC AR6 Working Group III report. The paper provides key insight for anyone wishing to understand the assessment of climate outcomes of mitigation pathways in the context of the Paris Agreement.
Leighton A. Regayre, Lucia Deaconu, Daniel P. Grosvenor, David Sexton, Christopher C. Symonds, Tom Langton, Duncan Watson-Paris, Jane P. Mulcahy, Kirsty J. Pringle, Mark Richardson, Jill S. Johnson, John Rostron, Hamish Gordon, Grenville Lister, Philip Stier, and Ken S. Carslaw
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-1330, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-1330, 2022
Preprint archived
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We show that potential structural deficiencies in a climate model can be exposed by comprehensively exploring its parametric uncertainty, and that these deficiencies limit how much the model uncertainty can be reduced through observational constraint. Combined consideration of parametric and structural uncertainties provides a future pathway towards building models that have greater physical realism and lower uncertainty.
Ruksana H. Rimi, Karsten Haustein, Emily J. Barbour, Sarah N. Sparrow, Sihan Li, David C. H. Wallom, and Myles R. Allen
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 5737–5756, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5737-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5737-2022, 2022
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Extreme rainfall events are major concerns in Bangladesh. Heavy downpours can cause flash floods and damage nearly harvestable crops in pre-monsoon season. While in monsoon season, the impacts can range from widespread agricultural loss, huge property damage, to loss of lives and livelihoods. This paper assesses the role of anthropogenic climate change drivers in changing risks of extreme rainfall events during pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons at local sub-regional-scale within Bangladesh.
Johannes Quaas, Hailing Jia, Chris Smith, Anna Lea Albright, Wenche Aas, Nicolas Bellouin, Olivier Boucher, Marie Doutriaux-Boucher, Piers M. Forster, Daniel Grosvenor, Stuart Jenkins, Zbigniew Klimont, Norman G. Loeb, Xiaoyan Ma, Vaishali Naik, Fabien Paulot, Philip Stier, Martin Wild, Gunnar Myhre, and Michael Schulz
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 12221–12239, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-12221-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-12221-2022, 2022
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Pollution particles cool climate and offset part of the global warming. However, they are washed out by rain and thus their effect responds quickly to changes in emissions. We show multiple datasets to demonstrate that aerosol emissions and their concentrations declined in many regions influenced by human emissions, as did the effects on clouds. Consequently, the cooling impact on the Earth energy budget became smaller. This change in trend implies a relative warming.
Amy H. Peace, Ben B. B. Booth, Leighton A. Regayre, Ken S. Carslaw, David M. H. Sexton, Céline J. W. Bonfils, and John W. Rostron
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1215–1232, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1215-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1215-2022, 2022
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Anthropogenic aerosol emissions have been linked to driving climate responses such as shifts in the location of tropical rainfall. However, the interaction of aerosols with climate remains one of the most uncertain aspects of climate modelling and limits our ability to predict future climate change. We use an ensemble of climate model simulations to investigate what impact the large uncertainty in how aerosols interact with climate has on predicting future tropical rainfall shifts.
Jan C. Minx, William F. Lamb, Robbie M. Andrew, Josep G. Canadell, Monica Crippa, Niklas Döbbeling, Piers M. Forster, Diego Guizzardi, Jos Olivier, Glen P. Peters, Julia Pongratz, Andy Reisinger, Matthew Rigby, Marielle Saunois, Steven J. Smith, Efisio Solazzo, and Hanqin Tian
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 5213–5252, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5213-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5213-2021, 2021
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We provide a synthetic dataset on anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for 1970–2018 with a fast-track extension to 2019. We show that GHG emissions continued to rise across all gases and sectors. Annual average GHG emissions growth slowed, but absolute decadal increases have never been higher in human history. We identify a number of data gaps and data quality issues in global inventories and highlight their importance for monitoring progress towards international climate goals.
Robin D. Lamboll, Chris D. Jones, Ragnhild B. Skeie, Stephanie Fiedler, Bjørn H. Samset, Nathan P. Gillett, Joeri Rogelj, and Piers M. Forster
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 3683–3695, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3683-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3683-2021, 2021
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Lockdowns to avoid the spread of COVID-19 have created an unprecedented reduction in human emissions. We can estimate the changes in emissions at a country level, but to make predictions about how this will affect our climate, we need more precise information about where the emissions happen. Here we combine older estimates of where emissions normally occur with very recent estimates of sector activity levels to enable different groups to make simulations of the climatic effects of lockdown.
Nicholas J. Leach, Stuart Jenkins, Zebedee Nicholls, Christopher J. Smith, John Lynch, Michelle Cain, Tristram Walsh, Bill Wu, Junichi Tsutsui, and Myles R. Allen
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 3007–3036, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3007-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-3007-2021, 2021
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This paper presents an update of the FaIR simple climate model, which can estimate the impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions on the global climate. This update aims to significantly increase the structural simplicity of the model, making it more understandable and transparent. This simplicity allows it to be implemented in a wide range of environments, including Excel. We suggest that it could be used widely in academia, corporate research, and education.
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Folmer Krikken, Sophie Lewis, Nicholas J. Leach, Flavio Lehner, Kate R. Saunders, Michiel van Weele, Karsten Haustein, Sihan Li, David Wallom, Sarah Sparrow, Julie Arrighi, Roop K. Singh, Maarten K. van Aalst, Sjoukje Y. Philip, Robert Vautard, and Friederike E. L. Otto
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 941–960, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-941-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-941-2021, 2021
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Southeastern Australia suffered from disastrous bushfires during the 2019/20 fire season, raising the question whether these have become more likely due to climate change. We found no attributable trend in extreme annual or monthly low precipitation but a clear shift towards more extreme heat. However, this shift is underestimated by the models. Analysing fire weather directly, we found that the chance has increased by at least 30 %, but due to the underestimation it could well be higher.
Gillian Thornhill, William Collins, Dirk Olivié, Ragnhild B. Skeie, Alex Archibald, Susanne Bauer, Ramiro Checa-Garcia, Stephanie Fiedler, Gerd Folberth, Ada Gjermundsen, Larry Horowitz, Jean-Francois Lamarque, Martine Michou, Jane Mulcahy, Pierre Nabat, Vaishali Naik, Fiona M. O'Connor, Fabien Paulot, Michael Schulz, Catherine E. Scott, Roland Séférian, Chris Smith, Toshihiko Takemura, Simone Tilmes, Kostas Tsigaridis, and James Weber
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 1105–1126, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-1105-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-1105-2021, 2021
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We find that increased temperatures affect aerosols and reactive gases by changing natural emissions and their rates of removal from the atmosphere. Changing the composition of these species in the atmosphere affects the radiative budget of the climate system and therefore amplifies or dampens the climate response of climate models of the Earth system. This study found that the largest effect is a dampening of climate change as warmer temperatures increase the emissions of cooling aerosols.
Gillian D. Thornhill, William J. Collins, Ryan J. Kramer, Dirk Olivié, Ragnhild B. Skeie, Fiona M. O'Connor, Nathan Luke Abraham, Ramiro Checa-Garcia, Susanne E. Bauer, Makoto Deushi, Louisa K. Emmons, Piers M. Forster, Larry W. Horowitz, Ben Johnson, James Keeble, Jean-Francois Lamarque, Martine Michou, Michael J. Mills, Jane P. Mulcahy, Gunnar Myhre, Pierre Nabat, Vaishali Naik, Naga Oshima, Michael Schulz, Christopher J. Smith, Toshihiko Takemura, Simone Tilmes, Tongwen Wu, Guang Zeng, and Jie Zhang
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 853–874, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-853-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-853-2021, 2021
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This paper is a study of how different constituents in the atmosphere, such as aerosols and gases like methane and ozone, affect the energy balance in the atmosphere. Different climate models were run using the same inputs to allow an easy comparison of the results and to understand where the models differ. We found the effect of aerosols is to reduce warming in the atmosphere, but this effect varies between models. Reactions between gases are also important in affecting climate.
Pierre Friedlingstein, Michael O'Sullivan, Matthew W. Jones, Robbie M. Andrew, Judith Hauck, Are Olsen, Glen P. Peters, Wouter Peters, Julia Pongratz, Stephen Sitch, Corinne Le Quéré, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Robert B. Jackson, Simone Alin, Luiz E. O. C. Aragão, Almut Arneth, Vivek Arora, Nicholas R. Bates, Meike Becker, Alice Benoit-Cattin, Henry C. Bittig, Laurent Bopp, Selma Bultan, Naveen Chandra, Frédéric Chevallier, Louise P. Chini, Wiley Evans, Liesbeth Florentie, Piers M. Forster, Thomas Gasser, Marion Gehlen, Dennis Gilfillan, Thanos Gkritzalis, Luke Gregor, Nicolas Gruber, Ian Harris, Kerstin Hartung, Vanessa Haverd, Richard A. Houghton, Tatiana Ilyina, Atul K. Jain, Emilie Joetzjer, Koji Kadono, Etsushi Kato, Vassilis Kitidis, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Peter Landschützer, Nathalie Lefèvre, Andrew Lenton, Sebastian Lienert, Zhu Liu, Danica Lombardozzi, Gregg Marland, Nicolas Metzl, David R. Munro, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Shin-Ichiro Nakaoka, Yosuke Niwa, Kevin O'Brien, Tsuneo Ono, Paul I. Palmer, Denis Pierrot, Benjamin Poulter, Laure Resplandy, Eddy Robertson, Christian Rödenbeck, Jörg Schwinger, Roland Séférian, Ingunn Skjelvan, Adam J. P. Smith, Adrienne J. Sutton, Toste Tanhua, Pieter P. Tans, Hanqin Tian, Bronte Tilbrook, Guido van der Werf, Nicolas Vuichard, Anthony P. Walker, Rik Wanninkhof, Andrew J. Watson, David Willis, Andrew J. Wiltshire, Wenping Yuan, Xu Yue, and Sönke Zaehle
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 3269–3340, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3269-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3269-2020, 2020
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The Global Carbon Budget 2020 describes the data sets and methodology used to quantify the emissions of carbon dioxide and their partitioning among the atmosphere, land, and ocean. These living data are updated every year to provide the highest transparency and traceability in the reporting of CO2, the key driver of climate change.
Zebedee R. J. Nicholls, Malte Meinshausen, Jared Lewis, Robert Gieseke, Dietmar Dommenget, Kalyn Dorheim, Chen-Shuo Fan, Jan S. Fuglestvedt, Thomas Gasser, Ulrich Golüke, Philip Goodwin, Corinne Hartin, Austin P. Hope, Elmar Kriegler, Nicholas J. Leach, Davide Marchegiani, Laura A. McBride, Yann Quilcaille, Joeri Rogelj, Ross J. Salawitch, Bjørn H. Samset, Marit Sandstad, Alexey N. Shiklomanov, Ragnhild B. Skeie, Christopher J. Smith, Steve Smith, Katsumasa Tanaka, Junichi Tsutsui, and Zhiang Xie
Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 5175–5190, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-5175-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-5175-2020, 2020
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Computational limits mean that we cannot run our most comprehensive climate models for all applications of interest. In such cases, reduced complexity models (RCMs) are used. Here, researchers working on 15 different models present the first systematic community effort to evaluate and compare RCMs: the Reduced Complexity Model Intercomparison Project (RCMIP). Our research ensures that users of RCMs can more easily evaluate the strengths, weaknesses and limitations of their tools.
Matthew J. Rowlinson, Alexandru Rap, Douglas S. Hamilton, Richard J. Pope, Stijn Hantson, Steve R. Arnold, Jed O. Kaplan, Almut Arneth, Martyn P. Chipperfield, Piers M. Forster, and Lars Nieradzik
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 10937–10951, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-10937-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-10937-2020, 2020
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Tropospheric ozone is an important greenhouse gas which contributes to anthropogenic climate change; however, the effect of human emissions is uncertain because pre-industrial ozone concentrations are not well understood. We use revised inventories of pre-industrial natural emissions to estimate the human contribution to changes in tropospheric ozone. We find that tropospheric ozone radiative forcing is up to 34 % lower when using improved pre-industrial biomass burning and vegetation emissions.
Christopher J. Smith, Ryan J. Kramer, and Adriana Sima
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2157–2168, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2157-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2157-2020, 2020
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Radiative kernels allow efficient diagnosis of climate feedbacks and radiative adjustments to an external forcing using standard climate model output. We present a radiative kernel derived from the UK Met Office's HadGEM3-GA7.1 climate model. We show that a highly resolved stratosphere is important for correctly diagnosing the stratospheric temperature adjustment to greenhouse gas forcings and, by extension, the instantaneous radiative forcing.
Leighton A. Regayre, Julia Schmale, Jill S. Johnson, Christian Tatzelt, Andrea Baccarini, Silvia Henning, Masaru Yoshioka, Frank Stratmann, Martin Gysel-Beer, Daniel P. Grosvenor, and Ken S. Carslaw
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 10063–10072, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-10063-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-10063-2020, 2020
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The amount of energy reflected back into space because of man-made particles is highly uncertain. Processes related to naturally occurring particles cause most of the uncertainty, but these processes are poorly constrained by present-day measurements. We show that measurements over the Southern Ocean, far from pollution sources, efficiently reduce climate model uncertainties. Our results pave the way to designing experiments and measurement campaigns that reduce this uncertainty even further.
Christopher J. Smith, Ryan J. Kramer, Gunnar Myhre, Kari Alterskjær, William Collins, Adriana Sima, Olivier Boucher, Jean-Louis Dufresne, Pierre Nabat, Martine Michou, Seiji Yukimoto, Jason Cole, David Paynter, Hideo Shiogama, Fiona M. O'Connor, Eddy Robertson, Andy Wiltshire, Timothy Andrews, Cécile Hannay, Ron Miller, Larissa Nazarenko, Alf Kirkevåg, Dirk Olivié, Stephanie Fiedler, Anna Lewinschal, Chloe Mackallah, Martin Dix, Robert Pincus, and Piers M. Forster
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 9591–9618, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9591-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9591-2020, 2020
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The spread in effective radiative forcing for both CO2 and aerosols is narrower in the latest CMIP6 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) generation than in CMIP5. For the case of CO2 it is likely that model radiation parameterisations have improved. Tropospheric and stratospheric radiative adjustments to the forcing behave differently for different forcing agents, and there is still significant diversity in how clouds respond to forcings, particularly for total anthropogenic forcing.
Jill S. Johnson, Leighton A. Regayre, Masaru Yoshioka, Kirsty J. Pringle, Steven T. Turnock, Jo Browse, David M. H. Sexton, John W. Rostron, Nick A. J. Schutgens, Daniel G. Partridge, Dantong Liu, James D. Allan, Hugh Coe, Aijun Ding, David D. Cohen, Armand Atanacio, Ville Vakkari, Eija Asmi, and Ken S. Carslaw
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 9491–9524, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9491-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9491-2020, 2020
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We use over 9000 monthly aggregated grid-box measurements of aerosol to constrain the uncertainty in the HadGEM3-UKCA climate model. Measurements of AOD, PM2.5, particle number concentrations, sulfate and organic mass concentrations are compared to 1 million
variantsof the model using an implausibility metric. Despite many compensating effects in the model, the procedure constrains the probability distributions of many parameters, and direct radiative forcing uncertainty is reduced by 34 %.
Nicolas Bellouin, Will Davies, Keith P. Shine, Johannes Quaas, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Piers M. Forster, Chris Smith, Lindsay Lee, Leighton Regayre, Guy Brasseur, Natalia Sudarchikova, Idir Bouarar, Olivier Boucher, and Gunnar Myhre
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 1649–1677, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-1649-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-1649-2020, 2020
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Quantifying the imbalance in the Earth's energy budget caused by human activities is important to understand and predict climate changes. This study presents new estimates of the imbalance caused by changes in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and particles of pollution. Over the period 2003–2017, the overall imbalance has been positive, indicating that the climate system has gained energy and will warm further.
Nicholas James Leach, Zebedee Nicholls, Stuart Jenkins, Christopher J. Smith, John Lynch, Michelle Cain, Bill Wu, Junichi Tsutsui, and Myles R. Allen
Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2019-379, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2019-379, 2020
Revised manuscript not accepted
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GIR is a simple climate model designed to make exploration of the impact of greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions on the climate easy and understandable for its users. It uses an intuitive input and output structure, and the model is itself a set of only six equations. This lends the model to applications such as teaching, or as a lowest common denominator model between groups in large-scale climate assessments. It could also be used to investigate more complex models through emulation.
Øivind Hodnebrog, Gunnar Myhre, Bjørn H. Samset, Kari Alterskjær, Timothy Andrews, Olivier Boucher, Gregory Faluvegi, Dagmar Fläschner, Piers M. Forster, Matthew Kasoar, Alf Kirkevåg, Jean-Francois Lamarque, Dirk Olivié, Thomas B. Richardson, Dilshad Shawki, Drew Shindell, Keith P. Shine, Philip Stier, Toshihiko Takemura, Apostolos Voulgarakis, and Duncan Watson-Parris
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 12887–12899, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-12887-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-12887-2019, 2019
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Different greenhouse gases (e.g. CO2) and aerosols (e.g. black carbon) impact the Earth’s water cycle differently. Here we investigate how various gases and particles impact atmospheric water vapour and its lifetime, i.e., the average number of days that water vapour stays in the atmosphere after evaporation and before precipitation. We find that this lifetime could increase substantially by the end of this century, indicating that important changes in precipitation patterns are excepted.
Matthew J. Rowlinson, Alexandru Rap, Stephen R. Arnold, Richard J. Pope, Martyn P. Chipperfield, Joe McNorton, Piers Forster, Hamish Gordon, Kirsty J. Pringle, Wuhu Feng, Brian J. Kerridge, Barry L. Latter, and Richard Siddans
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 8669–8686, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-8669-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-8669-2019, 2019
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Wildfires and meteorology have a substantial effect on atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as methane and ozone. During the 1997 El Niño event, unusually large fire emissions indirectly increased global methane through carbon monoxide emission, which decreased the oxidation capacity of the atmosphere. There were also large regional changes to tropospheric ozone concentrations, but contrasting effects of fire and meteorology resulted in a small change to global radiative forcing.
Sam Illingworth, Alice Bell, Stuart Capstick, Adam Corner, Piers Forster, Rosie Leigh, Maria Loroño Leturiondo, Catherine Muller, Harriett Richardson, and Emily Shuckburgh
Geosci. Commun., 1, 9–24, https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-1-9-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-1-9-2018, 2018
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Climate change is real, it is happening now, and it will not be stopped by the sole efforts of scientists. This study shows how poetry and open conversation can be used to develop a dialogue around mitigating climate change with different communities, including faith groups and people living with disabilities. Furthermore, it shows how this dialogue can help us to better understand the opportunities that these communities present in tackling the negative effects of human-made climate change.
Jill S. Johnson, Leighton A. Regayre, Masaru Yoshioka, Kirsty J. Pringle, Lindsay A. Lee, David M. H. Sexton, John W. Rostron, Ben B. B. Booth, and Kenneth S. Carslaw
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 13031–13053, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-13031-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-13031-2018, 2018
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We estimate the uncertainty in an aerosol–climate model that has been tuned to match several common types of observations. We used a large set of model simulations and built emulators so that we could generate 4 million “variants” of our climate model. Even after using nine aerosol and cloud observations to constrain the model, the uncertainty remains large. We conclude that estimates of aerosol forcing from multi-model studies are likely to be more uncertain than currently estimated.
Leighton A. Regayre, Jill S. Johnson, Masaru Yoshioka, Kirsty J. Pringle, David M. H. Sexton, Ben B. B. Booth, Lindsay A. Lee, Nicolas Bellouin, and Kenneth S. Carslaw
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 9975–10006, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-9975-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-9975-2018, 2018
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We sample uncertainty in one climate model by perturbing aerosol and physical atmosphere parameters. Our uncertainty is comparable to multi-model studies. Atmospheric parameters cause most of the top-of-atmosphere flux uncertainty; uncertainty in aerosol forcing is mostly caused by aerosols: both are important. The strongest aerosol forcings are inconsistent with top-of-atmosphere flux observations. Better constraint requires observations that share causes of uncertainty with aerosol forcing.
Tao Tang, Drew Shindell, Bjørn H. Samset, Oliviér Boucher, Piers M. Forster, Øivind Hodnebrog, Gunnar Myhre, Jana Sillmann, Apostolos Voulgarakis, Timothy Andrews, Gregory Faluvegi, Dagmar Fläschner, Trond Iversen, Matthew Kasoar, Viatcheslav Kharin, Alf Kirkevåg, Jean-Francois Lamarque, Dirk Olivié, Thomas Richardson, Camilla W. Stjern, and Toshihiko Takemura
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 8439–8452, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-8439-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-8439-2018, 2018
Benoit P. Guillod, Richard G. Jones, Simon J. Dadson, Gemma Coxon, Gianbattista Bussi, James Freer, Alison L. Kay, Neil R. Massey, Sarah N. Sparrow, David C. H. Wallom, Myles R. Allen, and Jim W. Hall
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 22, 611–634, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-611-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-611-2018, 2018
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Assessing the potential impacts of extreme events such as drought and flood requires large datasets of such events, especially when looking at the most severe and rare events. Using a state-of-the-art climate modelling infrastructure that is simulating large numbers of weather time series on volunteers' computers, we generate such a large dataset for the United Kingdom. The dataset covers the recent past (1900–2006) as well as two future time periods (2030s and 2080s).
Richard J. Millar, Zebedee R. Nicholls, Pierre Friedlingstein, and Myles R. Allen
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 7213–7228, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-7213-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-7213-2017, 2017
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Simple representations of the global coupled climate–carbon-cycle system are required for climate policy analysis. Existing models have often failed to capture important physical dependencies of the climate response to carbon dioxide emissions. In this paper we propose a simple but novel modification to impulse-response climate–carbon-cycle models to capture these physical dependencies. This simple model creates an important tool for both climate policy and climate science analysis.
Benoit P. Guillod, Richard G. Jones, Andy Bowery, Karsten Haustein, Neil R. Massey, Daniel M. Mitchell, Friederike E. L. Otto, Sarah N. Sparrow, Peter Uhe, David C. H. Wallom, Simon Wilson, and Myles R. Allen
Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 1849–1872, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-1849-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-1849-2017, 2017
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The weather@home climate modelling system uses the computing power of volunteers around the world to generate a very large number of climate model simulations. This is particularly useful when investigating extreme weather events, notably for the attribution of these events to anthropogenic climate change. A new version of weather@home is presented and evaluated, which includes an improved representation of the land surface and increased horizontal resolution over Europe.
Gunnar Myhre, Wenche Aas, Ribu Cherian, William Collins, Greg Faluvegi, Mark Flanner, Piers Forster, Øivind Hodnebrog, Zbigniew Klimont, Marianne T. Lund, Johannes Mülmenstädt, Cathrine Lund Myhre, Dirk Olivié, Michael Prather, Johannes Quaas, Bjørn H. Samset, Jordan L. Schnell, Michael Schulz, Drew Shindell, Ragnhild B. Skeie, Toshihiko Takemura, and Svetlana Tsyro
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 2709–2720, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-2709-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-2709-2017, 2017
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Over the past decades, the geographical distribution of emissions of substances that alter the atmospheric energy balance has changed due to economic growth and pollution regulations. Here, we show the resulting changes to aerosol and ozone abundances and their radiative forcing using recently updated emission data for the period 1990–2015, as simulated by seven global atmospheric composition models. The global mean radiative forcing is more strongly positive than reported in IPCC AR5.
Daniel Mitchell, Krishna AchutaRao, Myles Allen, Ingo Bethke, Urs Beyerle, Andrew Ciavarella, Piers M. Forster, Jan Fuglestvedt, Nathan Gillett, Karsten Haustein, William Ingram, Trond Iversen, Viatcheslav Kharin, Nicholas Klingaman, Neil Massey, Erich Fischer, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, John Scinocca, Øyvind Seland, Hideo Shiogama, Emily Shuckburgh, Sarah Sparrow, Dáithí Stone, Peter Uhe, David Wallom, Michael Wehner, and Rashyd Zaaboul
Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 571–583, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-571-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-571-2017, 2017
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This paper provides an experimental design to assess impacts of a world that is 1.5 °C warmer than at pre-industrial levels. The design is a new way to approach impacts from the climate community, and aims to answer questions related to the recent Paris Agreement. In particular the paper provides a method for studying extreme events under relatively high mitigation scenarios.
Tamás Kovács, Wuhu Feng, Anna Totterdill, John M. C. Plane, Sandip Dhomse, Juan Carlos Gómez-Martín, Gabriele P. Stiller, Florian J. Haenel, Christopher Smith, Piers M. Forster, Rolando R. García, Daniel R. Marsh, and Martyn P. Chipperfield
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 883–898, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-883-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-883-2017, 2017
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Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a very potent greenhouse gas, which is present in the atmosphere only through its industrial use, for example as an electrical insulator. To estimate accurately the impact of SF6 emissions on climate we need to know how long it persists in the atmosphere before being removed. Previous estimates of the SF6 lifetime indicate a large degree of uncertainty. Here we use a detailed atmospheric model to calculate a current best estimate of the SF6 lifetime.
Robert Pincus, Piers M. Forster, and Bjorn Stevens
Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 3447–3460, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-3447-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-3447-2016, 2016
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This paper describes an experimental protocol to understand the changes in energy balance (the "radiative forcing") that arise due to changes in atmospheric composition and why this value is not the same across climate models. The protocol includes a way to determine the total forcing to which each model is subjected, experiments designed at teasing out why certain errors occur, and experiments to identify any robust signals caused by atmospheric particles from human activities.
Mitchell T. Black, David J. Karoly, Suzanne M. Rosier, Sam M. Dean, Andrew D. King, Neil R. Massey, Sarah N. Sparrow, Andy Bowery, David Wallom, Richard G. Jones, Friederike E. L. Otto, and Myles R. Allen
Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 3161–3176, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-3161-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-3161-2016, 2016
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This study presents a citizen science computing project, known as weather@home Australia–New Zealand, which runs climate models on thousands of home computers. By harnessing the power of volunteers' computers, this project is capable of simulating extreme weather events over Australia and New Zealand under different climate scenarios.
Anna Totterdill, Tamás Kovács, Wuhu Feng, Sandip Dhomse, Christopher J. Smith, Juan Carlos Gómez-Martín, Martyn P. Chipperfield, Piers M. Forster, and John M. C. Plane
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 11451–11463, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-11451-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-11451-2016, 2016
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In this study we have experimentally determined the infrared absorption cross sections of NF3 and CFC-115, calculated the radiative forcing and efficiency using two radiative transfer models and identified the effect of clouds and stratospheric adjustment. We have also determined their atmospheric lifetimes using the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model.
S. Sippel, F. E. L. Otto, M. Forkel, M. R. Allen, B. P. Guillod, M. Heimann, M. Reichstein, S. I. Seneviratne, K. Thonicke, and M. D. Mahecha
Earth Syst. Dynam., 7, 71–88, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-7-71-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-7-71-2016, 2016
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We introduce a novel technique to bias correct climate model output for impact simulations that preserves its physical consistency and multivariate structure. The methodology considerably improves the representation of extremes in climatic variables relative to conventional bias correction strategies. Illustrative simulations of biosphere–atmosphere carbon and water fluxes with a biosphere model (LPJmL) show that the novel technique can be usefully applied to drive climate impact models.
Related subject area
Climate and Earth system modeling
SURFER v3.0: a fast model with ice sheet tipping points and carbon cycle feedbacks for short- and long-term climate scenarios
NMH-CS 3.0: a C# programming language and Windows-system-based ecohydrological model derived from Noah-MP
A method for quantifying uncertainty in spatially interpolated meteorological data with application to daily maximum air temperature
Baseline Climate Variables for Earth System Modelling
PaleoSTeHM v1.0: a modern, scalable spatiotemporal hierarchical modeling framework for paleo-environmental data
The Tropical Basin Interaction Model Intercomparison Project (TBIMIP)
ZEMBA v1.0: an energy and moisture balance climate model to investigate Quaternary climate
Development and evaluation of a new 4DEnVar-based weakly coupled ocean data assimilation system in E3SMv2
TemDeep: a self-supervised framework for temporal downscaling of atmospheric fields at arbitrary time resolutions
The ensemble consistency test: from CESM to MPAS and beyond
Presentation, calibration and testing of the DCESS II Earth system model of intermediate complexity (version 1.0)
Synthesizing global carbon–nitrogen coupling effects – the MAGICC coupled carbon–nitrogen cycle model v1.0
Historical trends and controlling factors of isoprene emissions in CMIP6 Earth system models
Investigating carbon and nitrogen conservation in reported CMIP6 Earth system model data
From weather data to river runoff: using spatiotemporal convolutional networks for discharge forecasting
A Fortran–Python interface for integrating machine learning parameterization into earth system models
A rapid-application emissions-to-impacts tool for scenario assessment: Probabilistic Regional Impacts from Model patterns and Emissions (PRIME)
The DOE E3SM version 2.1: overview and assessment of the impacts of parameterized ocean submesoscales
WRF-ELM v1.0: a regional climate model to study land–atmosphere interactions over heterogeneous land use regions
Modeling commercial-scale CO2 storage in the gas hydrate stability zone with PFLOTRAN v6.0
DiuSST: a conceptual model of diurnal warm layers for idealized atmospheric simulations with interactive sea surface temperature
High-Resolution Model Intercomparison Project phase 2 (HighResMIP2) towards CMIP7
T&C-CROP: representing mechanistic crop growth with a terrestrial biosphere model (T&C, v1.5) – model formulation and validation
An updated non-intrusive, multi-scale, and flexible coupling interface in WRF 4.6.0
Monitoring and benchmarking Earth system model simulations with ESMValTool v2.12.0
The Earth Science Box Modeling Toolkit (ESBMTK 0.14.0.11): a Python library for research and teaching
CropSuite v1.0 – a comprehensive open-source crop suitability model considering climate variability for climate impact assessment
ICON ComIn – the ICON Community Interface (ComIn version 0.1.0, with ICON version 2024.01-01)
Using feature importance as an exploratory data analysis tool on Earth system models
A new metrics framework for quantifying and intercomparing atmospheric rivers in observations, reanalyses, and climate models
The real challenges for climate and weather modelling on its way to sustained exascale performance: a case study using ICON (v2.6.6)
Improving the representation of major Indian crops in the Community Land Model version 5.0 (CLM5) using site-scale crop data
Evaluation of CORDEX ERA5-forced NARCliM2.0 regional climate models over Australia using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model version 4.1.2
Design, evaluation, and future projections of the NARCliM2.0 CORDEX-CMIP6 Australasia regional climate ensemble
The Detection and Attribution Model Intercomparison Project (DAMIP v2.0) contribution to CMIP7
Amending the algorithm of aerosol–radiation interactions in WRF-Chem (v4.4)
The very-high-resolution configuration of the EC-Earth global model for HighResMIP
GOSI9: UK Global Ocean and Sea Ice configurations
Decomposition of skill scores for conditional verification: impact of Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation phases on the predictability of decadal temperature forecasts
Virtual Integration of Satellite and In-situ Observation Networks (VISION) v1.0: In-Situ Observations Simulator (ISO_simulator)
Climate model downscaling in central Asia: a dynamical and a neural network approach
Advanced climate model evaluation with ESMValTool v2.11.0 using parallel, out-of-core, and distributed computing
Multi-year simulations at kilometre scale with the Integrated Forecasting System coupled to FESOM2.5 and NEMOv3.4
Subsurface hydrological controls on the short-term effects of hurricanes on nitrate–nitrogen runoff loading: a case study of Hurricane Ida using the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) Land Model (v2.1)
CARIB12: a regional Community Earth System Model/Modular Ocean Model 6 configuration of the Caribbean Sea
Process-based modeling framework for sustainable irrigation management at the regional scale: Integrating rice production, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions
A regional physical-biogeochemical ocean model for marine resource applications in the Northeast Pacific (MOM6-COBALT-NEP10k v1.0)
Architectural insights into and training methodology optimization of Pangu-Weather
Evaluation of global fire simulations in CMIP6 Earth system models
Evaluating downscaled products with expected hydroclimatic co-variances
Victor Couplet, Marina Martínez Montero, and Michel Crucifix
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 3081–3129, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-3081-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-3081-2025, 2025
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We present SURFER v3.0, a simple climate model designed to estimate the impact of CO2 and CH4 emissions on global temperatures, sea levels, and ocean pH. We added new carbon cycle processes and calibrated the model to observations and results from more complex models, enabling use over timescales ranging from decades to millions of years. SURFER v3.0 is fast, transparent, and easy to use, making it an ideal tool for policy assessments and suitable for educational purposes.
Yong-He Liu and Zong-Liang Yang
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 3157–3174, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-3157-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-3157-2025, 2025
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NMH-CS 3.0 is a C#-based ecohydrological model reconstructed from the WRF-Hydro/Noah-MP model by translating the Fortran code of WRF-Hydro 3.0 and integrating a parallel river routing module. It enables efficient execution on multi-core personal computers. Simulations in the Yellow River basin demonstrate its consistency with WRF-Hydro outputs, providing a reliable alternative to the original Noah-MP model.
Conor T. Doherty, Weile Wang, Hirofumi Hashimoto, and Ian G. Brosnan
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 3003–3016, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-3003-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-3003-2025, 2025
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We present, analyze, and validate a methodology for quantifying uncertainty in gridded meteorological data products produced by spatial interpolation. In a validation case study using daily maximum near-surface air temperature (Tmax), the method works well and produces predictive distributions with closely matching theoretical versus actual coverage levels. Application of the method reveals that the magnitude of uncertainty in interpolated Tmax varies significantly in both space and time.
Martin Juckes, Karl E. Taylor, Fabrizio Antonio, David Brayshaw, Carlo Buontempo, Jian Cao, Paul J. Durack, Michio Kawamiya, Hyungjun Kim, Tomas Lovato, Chloe Mackallah, Matthew Mizielinski, Alessandra Nuzzo, Martina Stockhause, Daniele Visioni, Jeremy Walton, Briony Turner, Eleanor O'Rourke, and Beth Dingley
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2639–2663, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2639-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2639-2025, 2025
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The Baseline Climate Variables for Earth System Modelling (ESM-BCVs) are defined as a list of 135 variables which have high utility for the evaluation and exploitation of climate simulations. The list reflects the most frequently used variables from Earth system models based on an assessment of data publication and download records from the largest archive of global climate projects.
Yucheng Lin, Robert E. Kopp, Alexander Reedy, Matteo Turilli, Shantenu Jha, and Erica L. Ashe
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2609–2637, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2609-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2609-2025, 2025
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PaleoSTeHM v1.0 is a state-of-the-art framework designed to reconstruct past environmental conditions using geological data. Built on modern machine learning techniques, it efficiently handles the sparse and noisy nature of paleo-records, allowing scientists to make accurate and scalable inferences about past environmental change. By using flexible statistical models, PaleoSTeHM separates different sources of uncertainty, improving the precision of historical climate reconstructions.
Ingo Richter, Ping Chang, Ping-Gin Chiu, Gokhan Danabasoglu, Takeshi Doi, Dietmar Dommenget, Guillaume Gastineau, Zoe E. Gillett, Aixue Hu, Takahito Kataoka, Noel S. Keenlyside, Fred Kucharski, Yuko M. Okumura, Wonsun Park, Malte F. Stuecker, Andréa S. Taschetto, Chunzai Wang, Stephen G. Yeager, and Sang-Wook Yeh
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2587–2608, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2587-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2587-2025, 2025
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Tropical ocean basins influence each other through multiple pathways and mechanisms, referred to here as tropical basin interaction (TBI). Many researchers have examined TBI using comprehensive climate models but have obtained conflicting results. This may be partly due to differences in experiment protocols and partly due to systematic model errors. The Tropical Basin Interaction Model Intercomparison Project (TBIMIP) aims to address this problem by designing a set of TBI experiments that will be performed by multiple models.
Daniel F. J. Gunning, Kerim H. Nisancioglu, Emilie Capron, and Roderik S. W. van de Wal
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2479–2508, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2479-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2479-2025, 2025
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This work documents the first results from ZEMBA: an energy balance model of the climate system. The model is a computationally efficient tool designed to study the response of climate to changes in the Earth's orbit. We demonstrate that ZEMBA reproduces many features of the Earth's climate for both the pre-industrial period and the Earth's most recent cold extreme – the Last Glacial Maximum. We intend to develop ZEMBA further and investigate the glacial cycles of the last 2.5 million years.
Pengfei Shi, L. Ruby Leung, and Bin Wang
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2443–2460, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2443-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2443-2025, 2025
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Improving climate predictions has significant socio-economic impacts. In this study, we develop and apply a new weakly coupled ocean data assimilation (WCODA) system to a coupled climate model. The WCODA system improves simulations of ocean temperature and salinity across many global regions. This system is meant to advance our understanding of the ocean's role in climate predictability.
Liwen Wang, Qian Li, Qi Lv, Xuan Peng, and Wei You
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2427–2442, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2427-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2427-2025, 2025
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Our research presents a novel deep learning approach called "TemDeep" for downscaling atmospheric variables at arbitrary time resolutions based on temporal coherence. Results show that our method can accurately recover evolution details superior to other methods, reaching 53.7 % in the restoration rate. Our findings are important for advancing weather forecasting models and enabling more precise and reliable predictions to support disaster preparedness, agriculture, and sustainable development.
Teo Price-Broncucia, Allison Baker, Dorit Hammerling, Michael Duda, and Rebecca Morrison
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2349–2372, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2349-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2349-2025, 2025
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The ensemble consistency test (ECT) and its ultrafast variant (UF-ECT) have become powerful tools in the development community for the identification of unwanted changes in the Community Earth System Model (CESM). We develop a generalized setup framework to enable easy adoption of the ECT approach for other model developers and communities. This framework specifies test parameters to accurately characterize model variability and balance test sensitivity and computational cost.
Esteban Fernández Villanueva and Gary Shaffer
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2161–2192, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2161-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2161-2025, 2025
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We describe, calibrate and test the Danish Center for Earth System Science (DCESS) II model, a new, broad, adaptable and fast Earth system model. DCESS II is designed for global simulations over timescales of years to millions of years using limited computer resources like a personal computer. With its flexibility and comprehensive treatment of the global carbon cycle, DCESS II is a useful, computationally friendly tool for simulations of past climates as well as for future Earth system projections.
Gang Tang, Zebedee Nicholls, Alexander Norton, Sönke Zaehle, and Malte Meinshausen
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2193–2230, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2193-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2193-2025, 2025
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We studied carbon–nitrogen coupling in Earth system models by developing a global carbon–nitrogen cycle model (CNit v1.0) within the widely used emulator MAGICC. CNit effectively reproduced the global carbon–nitrogen cycle dynamics observed in complex models. Our results show persistent nitrogen limitations on plant growth (net primary production) from 1850 to 2100, suggesting that nitrogen deficiency may constrain future land carbon sequestration.
Ngoc Thi Nhu Do, Kengo Sudo, Akihiko Ito, Louisa K. Emmons, Vaishali Naik, Kostas Tsigaridis, Øyvind Seland, Gerd A. Folberth, and Douglas I. Kelley
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2079–2109, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2079-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2079-2025, 2025
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Understanding historical isoprene emission changes is important for predicting future climate, but trends and their controlling factors remain uncertain. This study shows that long-term isoprene trends vary among Earth system models mainly due to partially incorporating CO2 effects and land cover changes rather than to climate. Future models that refine these factors’ effects on isoprene emissions, along with long-term observations, are essential for better understanding plant–climate interactions.
Gang Tang, Zebedee Nicholls, Chris Jones, Thomas Gasser, Alexander Norton, Tilo Ziehn, Alejandro Romero-Prieto, and Malte Meinshausen
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2111–2136, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2111-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2111-2025, 2025
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We analyzed carbon and nitrogen mass conservation in data from various Earth system models. Our findings reveal significant discrepancies between flux and pool size data, where cumulative imbalances can reach hundreds of gigatons of carbon or nitrogen. These imbalances appear primarily due to missing or inconsistently reported fluxes – especially for land-use and fire emissions. To enhance data quality, we recommend that future climate data protocols address this issue at the reporting stage.
Florian Börgel, Sven Karsten, Karoline Rummel, and Ulf Gräwe
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2005–2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2005-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2005-2025, 2025
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Forecasting river runoff, which is crucial for managing water resources and understanding climate impacts, can be challenging. This study introduces a new method using convolutional long short-term memory (ConvLSTM) networks, a machine learning model that processes spatial and temporal data. Focusing on the Baltic Sea region, our model uses weather data as input to predict daily river runoff for 97 rivers.
Tao Zhang, Cyril Morcrette, Meng Zhang, Wuyin Lin, Shaocheng Xie, Ye Liu, Kwinten Van Weverberg, and Joana Rodrigues
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1917–1928, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1917-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1917-2025, 2025
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Earth system models (ESMs) struggle with the uncertainties associated with parameterizing subgrid physics. Machine learning (ML) algorithms offer a solution by learning the important relationships and features from high-resolution models. To incorporate ML parameterizations into ESMs, we develop a Fortran–Python interface that allows for calling Python functions within Fortran-based ESMs. Through two case studies, this interface demonstrates its feasibility, modularity, and effectiveness.
Camilla Mathison, Eleanor J. Burke, Gregory Munday, Chris D. Jones, Chris J. Smith, Norman J. Steinert, Andy J. Wiltshire, Chris Huntingford, Eszter Kovacs, Laila K. Gohar, Rebecca M. Varney, and Douglas McNeall
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1785–1808, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1785-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1785-2025, 2025
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We present PRIME (Probabilistic Regional Impacts from Model patterns and Emissions), which is designed to take new emissions scenarios and rapidly provide regional impact information. PRIME allows large ensembles to be run on multi-centennial timescales, including the analysis of many important variables for impact assessments. Our evaluation shows that PRIME reproduces the climate response for known scenarios, providing confidence in using PRIME for novel scenarios.
Katherine M. Smith, Alice M. Barthel, LeAnn M. Conlon, Luke P. Van Roekel, Anthony Bartoletti, Jean-Christophe Golaz, Chengzhu Zhang, Carolyn Branecky Begeman, James J. Benedict, Gautam Bisht, Yan Feng, Walter Hannah, Bryce E. Harrop, Nicole Jeffery, Wuyin Lin, Po-Lun Ma, Mathew E. Maltrud, Mark R. Petersen, Balwinder Singh, Qi Tang, Teklu Tesfa, Jonathan D. Wolfe, Shaocheng Xie, Xue Zheng, Karthik Balaguru, Oluwayemi Garuba, Peter Gleckler, Aixue Hu, Jiwoo Lee, Ben Moore-Maley, and Ana C. Ordoñez
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1613–1633, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1613-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1613-2025, 2025
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Version 2.1 of the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) adds the Fox-Kemper et al. (2011) mixed-layer eddy parameterization, which restratifies the ocean surface layer through an overturning streamfunction. Results include surface layer bias reduction in temperature, salinity, and sea ice extent in the North Atlantic; a small strengthening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation; and improvements to many atmospheric climatological variables.
Huilin Huang, Yun Qian, Gautam Bisht, Jiali Wang, Tirthankar Chakraborty, Dalei Hao, Jianfeng Li, Travis Thurber, Balwinder Singh, Zhao Yang, Ye Liu, Pengfei Xue, William J. Sacks, Ethan Coon, and Robert Hetland
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1427–1443, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1427-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1427-2025, 2025
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We integrate the E3SM Land Model (ELM) with the WRF model through the Lightweight Infrastructure for Land Atmosphere Coupling (LILAC) Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF). This framework includes a top-level driver, LILAC, for variable communication between WRF and ELM and ESMF caps for ELM initialization, execution, and finalization. The LILAC–ESMF framework maintains the integrity of the ELM's source code structure and facilitates the transfer of future ELM model developments to WRF-ELM.
Michael Nole, Jonah Bartrand, Fawz Naim, and Glenn Hammond
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1413–1425, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1413-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1413-2025, 2025
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Safe carbon dioxide (CO2) storage is likely to be critical for mitigating some of the most severe effects of climate change. We present a simulation framework for modeling CO2 storage beneath the seafloor, where CO2 can form a solid. This can aid in permanent CO2 storage for long periods of time. Our models show what a commercial-scale CO2 injection would look like in a marine environment. We discuss what would need to be considered when designing a subsea CO2 injection.
Reyk Börner, Jan O. Haerter, and Romain Fiévet
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1333–1356, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1333-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1333-2025, 2025
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The daily cycle of sea surface temperature (SST) impacts clouds above the ocean and could influence the clustering of thunderstorms linked to extreme rainfall and hurricanes. However, daily SST variability is often poorly represented in modeling studies of how clouds cluster. We present a simple, wind-responsive model of upper-ocean temperature for use in atmospheric simulations. Evaluating the model against observations, we show that it performs significantly better than common slab models.
Malcolm J. Roberts, Kevin A. Reed, Qing Bao, Joseph J. Barsugli, Suzana J. Camargo, Louis-Philippe Caron, Ping Chang, Cheng-Ta Chen, Hannah M. Christensen, Gokhan Danabasoglu, Ivy Frenger, Neven S. Fučkar, Shabeh ul Hasson, Helene T. Hewitt, Huanping Huang, Daehyun Kim, Chihiro Kodama, Michael Lai, Lai-Yung Ruby Leung, Ryo Mizuta, Paulo Nobre, Pablo Ortega, Dominique Paquin, Christopher D. Roberts, Enrico Scoccimarro, Jon Seddon, Anne Marie Treguier, Chia-Ying Tu, Paul A. Ullrich, Pier Luigi Vidale, Michael F. Wehner, Colin M. Zarzycki, Bosong Zhang, Wei Zhang, and Ming Zhao
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1307–1332, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1307-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1307-2025, 2025
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HighResMIP2 is a model intercomparison project focusing on high-resolution global climate models, that is, those with grid spacings of 25 km or less in the atmosphere and ocean, using simulations of decades to a century in length. We are proposing an update of our simulation protocol to make the models more applicable to key questions for climate variability and hazard in present-day and future projections and to build links with other communities to provide more robust climate information.
Jordi Buckley Paules, Simone Fatichi, Bonnie Warring, and Athanasios Paschalis
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1287–1305, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1287-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1287-2025, 2025
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We present and validate enhancements to the process-based T&C model aimed at improving its representation of crop growth and management practices. The updated model, T&C-CROP, enables applications such as analysing the hydrological and carbon storage impacts of land use transitions (e.g. conversions between crops, forests, and pastures) and optimizing irrigation and fertilization strategies in response to climate change.
Sébastien Masson, Swen Jullien, Eric Maisonnave, David Gill, Guillaume Samson, Mathieu Le Corre, and Lionel Renault
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1241–1263, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1241-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1241-2025, 2025
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This article details a new feature we implemented in the popular regional atmospheric model WRF. This feature allows for data exchange between WRF and any other model (e.g. an ocean model) using the coupling library Ocean–Atmosphere–Sea–Ice–Soil Model Coupling Toolkit (OASIS3-MCT). This coupling interface is designed to be non-intrusive, flexible and modular. It also offers the possibility of taking into account the nested zooms used in WRF or in the models with which it is coupled.
Axel Lauer, Lisa Bock, Birgit Hassler, Patrick Jöckel, Lukas Ruhe, and Manuel Schlund
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1169–1188, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1169-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1169-2025, 2025
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Earth system models are important tools to improve our understanding of current climate and to project climate change. Thus, it is crucial to understand possible shortcomings in the models. New features of the ESMValTool software package allow one to compare and visualize a model's performance with respect to reproducing observations in the context of other climate models in an easy and user-friendly way. We aim to help model developers assess and monitor climate simulations more efficiently.
Ulrich G. Wortmann, Tina Tsan, Mahrukh Niazi, Irene A. Ma, Ruben Navasardyan, Magnus-Roland Marun, Bernardo S. Chede, Jingwen Zhong, and Morgan Wolfe
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1155–1167, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1155-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1155-2025, 2025
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The Earth Science Box Modeling Toolkit (ESBMTK) is a user-friendly Python library that simplifies the creation of models to study earth system processes, such as the carbon cycle and ocean chemistry. It enhances learning by emphasizing concepts over programming and is accessible to students and researchers alike. By automating complex calculations and promoting code clarity, ESBMTK accelerates model development while improving reproducibility and the usability of scientific research.
Florian Zabel, Matthias Knüttel, and Benjamin Poschlod
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1067–1087, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1067-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1067-2025, 2025
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CropSuite is a new open-source crop suitability model. It provides a GUI and a wide range of options, including a spatial downscaling of climate data. We apply CropSuite to 48 staple and opportunity crops at a 1 km spatial resolution in Africa. We find that climate variability significantly impacts suitable areas but also affects optimal sowing dates and multiple cropping potential. The results provide valuable information for climate impact assessments, adaptation, and land-use planning.
Kerstin Hartung, Bastian Kern, Nils-Arne Dreier, Jörn Geisbüsch, Mahnoosh Haghighatnasab, Patrick Jöckel, Astrid Kerkweg, Wilton Jaciel Loch, Florian Prill, and Daniel Rieger
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1001–1015, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1001-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1001-2025, 2025
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The ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic (ICON) model system Community Interface (ComIn) library supports connecting third-party modules to the ICON model. Third-party modules can range from simple diagnostic Python scripts to full chemistry models. ComIn offers a low barrier for code extensions to ICON, provides multi-language support (Fortran, C/C++, and Python), and reduces the migration effort in response to new ICON releases. This paper presents the ComIn design principles and a range of use cases.
Daniel Ries, Katherine Goode, Kellie McClernon, and Benjamin Hillman
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1041–1065, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1041-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1041-2025, 2025
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Machine learning has advanced research in the climate science domain, but its models are difficult to understand. In order to understand the impacts and consequences of climate interventions such as stratospheric aerosol injection, complex models are often necessary. We use a case study to illustrate how we can understand the inner workings of a complex model. We present this technique as an exploratory tool that can be used to quickly discover and assess relationships in complex climate data.
Bo Dong, Paul Ullrich, Jiwoo Lee, Peter Gleckler, Kristin Chang, and Travis A. O'Brien
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 961–976, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-961-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-961-2025, 2025
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A metrics package designed for easy analysis of atmospheric river (AR) characteristics and statistics is presented. The tool is efficient for diagnosing systematic AR bias in climate models and useful for evaluating new AR characteristics in model simulations. In climate models, landfalling AR precipitation shows dry biases globally, and AR tracks are farther poleward (equatorward) in the North and South Atlantic (South Pacific and Indian Ocean).
Panagiotis Adamidis, Erik Pfister, Hendryk Bockelmann, Dominik Zobel, Jens-Olaf Beismann, and Marek Jacob
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 905–919, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-905-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-905-2025, 2025
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In this paper, we investigated performance indicators of the climate model ICON (ICOsahedral Nonhydrostatic) on different compute architectures to answer the question of how to generate high-resolution climate simulations. Evidently, it is not enough to use more computing units of the conventionally used architectures; higher memory throughput is the most promising approach. More potential can be gained from single-node optimization rather than simply increasing the number of compute nodes.
Kangari Narender Reddy, Somnath Baidya Roy, Sam S. Rabin, Danica L. Lombardozzi, Gudimetla Venkateswara Varma, Ruchira Biswas, and Devavat Chiru Naik
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 763–785, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-763-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-763-2025, 2025
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The study aimed to improve the representation of wheat and rice in a land model for the Indian region. The modified model performed significantly better than the default model in simulating crop phenology, yield, and carbon, water, and energy fluxes compared to observations. The study highlights the need for global land models to use region-specific crop parameters for accurately simulating vegetation processes and land surface processes.
Giovanni Di Virgilio, Fei Ji, Eugene Tam, Jason P. Evans, Jatin Kala, Julia Andrys, Christopher Thomas, Dipayan Choudhury, Carlos Rocha, Yue Li, and Matthew L. Riley
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 703–724, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-703-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-703-2025, 2025
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We evaluate the skill in simulating the Australian climate of some of the latest generation of regional climate models. We show when and where the models simulate this climate with high skill versus model limitations. We show how new models perform relative to the previous-generation models, assessing how model design features may underlie key performance improvements. This work is of national and international relevance as it can help guide the use and interpretation of climate projections.
Giovanni Di Virgilio, Jason P. Evans, Fei Ji, Eugene Tam, Jatin Kala, Julia Andrys, Christopher Thomas, Dipayan Choudhury, Carlos Rocha, Stephen White, Yue Li, Moutassem El Rafei, Rishav Goyal, Matthew L. Riley, and Jyothi Lingala
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 671–702, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-671-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-671-2025, 2025
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We introduce new climate models that simulate Australia’s future climate at regional scales, including at an unprecedented resolution of 4 km for 1950–2100. We describe the model design process used to create these new climate models. We show how the new models perform relative to previous-generation models and compare their climate projections. This work is of national and international relevance as it can help guide climate model design and the use and interpretation of climate projections.
Nathan P. Gillett, Isla R. Simpson, Gabi Hegerl, Reto Knutti, Dann Mitchell, Aurélien Ribes, Hideo Shiogama, Dáithí Stone, Claudia Tebaldi, Piotr Wolski, Wenxia Zhang, and Vivek K. Arora
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-4086, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-4086, 2025
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Climate model simulations of the response to human and natural influences together, natural climate influences alone, and greenhouse gases alone, among others, are key to quantifying human influence on the climate. The last set of such coordinated simulations underpinned key findings in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Here we propose a new set of such simulations to be used in the next generation of attribution studies, and to underpin the next IPCC report.
Jiawang Feng, Chun Zhao, Qiuyan Du, Zining Yang, and Chen Jin
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 585–603, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-585-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-585-2025, 2025
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In this study, we improved the calculation of how aerosols in the air interact with radiation in WRF-Chem. The original model used a simplified method, but we developed a more accurate approach. We found that this method significantly changes the properties of the estimated aerosols and their effects on radiation, especially for dust aerosols. It also impacts the simulated weather conditions. Our work highlights the importance of correctly representing aerosol–radiation interactions in models.
Eduardo Moreno-Chamarro, Thomas Arsouze, Mario Acosta, Pierre-Antoine Bretonnière, Miguel Castrillo, Eric Ferrer, Amanda Frigola, Daria Kuznetsova, Eneko Martin-Martinez, Pablo Ortega, and Sergi Palomas
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 461–482, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-461-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-461-2025, 2025
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We present the high-resolution model version of the EC-Earth global climate model to contribute to HighResMIP. The combined model resolution is about 10–15 km in both the ocean and atmosphere, which makes it one of the finest ever used to complete historical and scenario simulations. This model is compared with two lower-resolution versions, with a 100 km and a 25 km grid. The three models are compared with observations to study the improvements thanks to the increased resolution.
Catherine Guiavarc'h, David Storkey, Adam T. Blaker, Ed Blockley, Alex Megann, Helene Hewitt, Michael J. Bell, Daley Calvert, Dan Copsey, Bablu Sinha, Sophia Moreton, Pierre Mathiot, and Bo An
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 377–403, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-377-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-377-2025, 2025
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The Global Ocean and Sea Ice configuration version 9 (GOSI9) is the new UK hierarchy of model configurations based on the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) and available at three resolutions. It will be used for various applications, e.g. weather forecasting and climate prediction. It improves upon the previous version by reducing global temperature and salinity biases and enhancing the representation of Arctic sea ice and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
Andy Richling, Jens Grieger, and Henning W. Rust
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 361–375, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-361-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-361-2025, 2025
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The performance of weather and climate prediction systems is variable in time and space. It is of interest how this performance varies in different situations. We provide a decomposition of a skill score (a measure of forecast performance) as a tool for detailed assessment of performance variability to support model development or forecast improvement. The framework is exemplified with decadal forecasts to assess the impact of different ocean states in the North Atlantic on temperature forecast.
Maria R. Russo, Sadie L. Bartholomew, David Hassell, Alex M. Mason, Erica Neininger, A. James Perman, David A. J. Sproson, Duncan Watson-Parris, and Nathan Luke Abraham
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 181–191, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-181-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-181-2025, 2025
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Observational data and modelling capabilities have expanded in recent years, but there are still barriers preventing these two data sources from being used in synergy. Proper comparison requires generating, storing, and handling a large amount of data. This work describes the first step in the development of a new set of software tools, the VISION toolkit, which can enable the easy and efficient integration of observational and model data required for model evaluation.
Bijan Fallah, Masoud Rostami, Emmanuele Russo, Paula Harder, Christoph Menz, Peter Hoffmann, Iulii Didovets, and Fred F. Hattermann
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 161–180, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-161-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-161-2025, 2025
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We tried to contribute to a local climate change impact study in central Asia, a region that is water-scarce and vulnerable to global climate change. We use regional models and machine learning to produce reliable local data from global climate models. We find that regional models show more realistic and detailed changes in heavy precipitation than global climate models. Our work can help assess the future risks of extreme events and plan adaptation strategies in central Asia.
Manuel Schlund, Bouwe Andela, Jörg Benke, Ruth Comer, Birgit Hassler, Emma Hogan, Peter Kalverla, Axel Lauer, Bill Little, Saskia Loosveldt Tomas, Francesco Nattino, Patrick Peglar, Valeriu Predoi, Stef Smeets, Stephen Worsley, Martin Yeo, and Klaus Zimmermann
Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2024-236, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2024-236, 2025
Revised manuscript accepted for GMD
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The Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) is a community diagnostics and performance metrics tool for the evaluation of Earth system models. Here, we describe recent significant improvements of ESMValTool’s computational efficiency including parallel, out-of-core, and distributed computing. Evaluations with the enhanced version of ESMValTool are faster, use less computational resources, and can handle input data larger than the available memory.
Thomas Rackow, Xabier Pedruzo-Bagazgoitia, Tobias Becker, Sebastian Milinski, Irina Sandu, Razvan Aguridan, Peter Bechtold, Sebastian Beyer, Jean Bidlot, Souhail Boussetta, Willem Deconinck, Michail Diamantakis, Peter Dueben, Emanuel Dutra, Richard Forbes, Rohit Ghosh, Helge F. Goessling, Ioan Hadade, Jan Hegewald, Thomas Jung, Sarah Keeley, Lukas Kluft, Nikolay Koldunov, Aleksei Koldunov, Tobias Kölling, Josh Kousal, Christian Kühnlein, Pedro Maciel, Kristian Mogensen, Tiago Quintino, Inna Polichtchouk, Balthasar Reuter, Domokos Sármány, Patrick Scholz, Dmitry Sidorenko, Jan Streffing, Birgit Sützl, Daisuke Takasuka, Steffen Tietsche, Mirco Valentini, Benoît Vannière, Nils Wedi, Lorenzo Zampieri, and Florian Ziemen
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 33–69, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-33-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-33-2025, 2025
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Detailed global climate model simulations have been created based on a numerical weather prediction model, offering more accurate spatial detail down to the scale of individual cities ("kilometre-scale") and a better understanding of climate phenomena such as atmospheric storms, whirls in the ocean, and cracks in sea ice. The new model aims to provide globally consistent information on local climate change with greater precision, benefiting environmental planning and local impact modelling.
Yilin Fang, Hoang Viet Tran, and L. Ruby Leung
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 19–32, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-19-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-19-2025, 2025
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Hurricanes may worsen water quality in the lower Mississippi River basin (LMRB) by increasing nutrient runoff. We found that runoff parameterizations greatly affect nitrate–nitrogen runoff simulated using an Earth system land model. Our simulations predicted increased nitrogen runoff in the LMRB during Hurricane Ida in 2021, albeit less pronounced than the observations, indicating areas for model improvement to better understand and manage nutrient runoff loss during hurricanes in the region.
Giovanni Seijo-Ellis, Donata Giglio, Gustavo Marques, and Frank Bryan
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8989–9021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8989-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8989-2024, 2024
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A CESM–MOM6 regional configuration of the Caribbean Sea was developed in response to the rising need for high-resolution models for climate impact studies. The configuration is validated for the period 2000–2020 and improves significant errors in a low-resolution model. Oceanic properties are well represented. Patterns of freshwater associated with the Amazon River are well captured, and the mean flows of ocean waters across multiple passages in the Caribbean Sea agree with observations.
Yan Bo, Hao Liang, Tao Li, and Feng Zhou
Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2024-212, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2024-212, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for GMD
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This study proposed an advancing framework for modeling regional rice production, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions. The framework integrated a process-based soil-crop model with key physiological effects, a novel model upscaling method, and the NSGA-II multi-objective optimization algorithm at a parallel computing platform. The framework provides a valuable tool for irrigation optimization to deliver co-benefits of ensuring food production, reducing water use and greenhouse gas emissions.
Elizabeth J. Drenkard, Charles A. Stock, Andrew C. Ross, Yi-Cheng Teng, Theresa Morrison, Wei Cheng, Alistair Adcroft, Enrique Curchitser, Raphael Dussin, Robert Hallberg, Claudine Hauri, Katherine Hedstrom, Albert Hermann, Michael G. Jacox, Kelly A. Kearney, Remi Pages, Darren J. Pilcher, Mercedes Pozo Buil, Vivek Seelanki, and Niki Zadeh
Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2024-195, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2024-195, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for GMD
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We made a new regional ocean model to assist fisheries and ecosystem managers make decisions in the Northeast Pacific Ocean (NEP). We found that the model did well simulating past ocean conditions like temperature, and nutrient and oxygen levels, and can even reproduce metrics used by and important to ecosystem managers.
Deifilia To, Julian Quinting, Gholam Ali Hoshyaripour, Markus Götz, Achim Streit, and Charlotte Debus
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8873–8884, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8873-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8873-2024, 2024
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Pangu-Weather is a breakthrough machine learning model in medium-range weather forecasting that considers 3D atmospheric information. We show that using a simpler 2D framework improves robustness, speeds up training, and reduces computational needs by 20 %–30 %. We introduce a training procedure that varies the importance of atmospheric variables over time to speed up training convergence. Decreasing computational demand increases the accessibility of training and working with the model.
Fang Li, Xiang Song, Sandy P. Harrison, Jennifer R. Marlon, Zhongda Lin, L. Ruby Leung, Jörg Schwinger, Virginie Marécal, Shiyu Wang, Daniel S. Ward, Xiao Dong, Hanna Lee, Lars Nieradzik, Sam S. Rabin, and Roland Séférian
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8751–8771, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8751-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8751-2024, 2024
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This study provides the first comprehensive assessment of historical fire simulations from 19 Earth system models in phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). Most models reproduce global totals, spatial patterns, seasonality, and regional historical changes well but fail to simulate the recent decline in global burned area and underestimate the fire response to climate variability. CMIP6 simulations address three critical issues of phase-5 models.
Seung H. Baek, Paul A. Ullrich, Bo Dong, and Jiwoo Lee
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8665–8681, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8665-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8665-2024, 2024
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We evaluate downscaled products by examining locally relevant co-variances during precipitation events. Common statistical downscaling techniques preserve expected co-variances during convective precipitation (a stationary phenomenon). However, they dampen future intensification of frontal precipitation (a non-stationary phenomenon) captured in global climate models and dynamical downscaling. Our study quantifies a ramification of the stationarity assumption underlying statistical downscaling.
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Short summary
FAIR v1.3 is a simple Python-based climate model emulator. It takes emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosol and ozone precursors to calculate radiative forcing and temperature change. It includes a simple representation of carbon cycle feedbacks due to temperature and accumulated carbon uptake. Large ensembles can be run with minimal computational expense for any user-specified emissions pathway. We produce such an ensemble using the RCP emissions datasets.
FAIR v1.3 is a simple Python-based climate model emulator. It takes emissions of greenhouse...
