Energetics of PCMDI/CMIP3 Climate Models: Energy Budget and Meridional Enthalpy Transport

TL;DR

This study evaluates climate models' energy budgets and meridional enthalpy transport, revealing biases and discrepancies that impact understanding of climate dynamics and polar amplification under different CO2 scenarios.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of energy budget biases and meridional transport changes in CMIP3 climate models, highlighting areas needing improvement.

Findings

Most models show biases in global energy budgets.

Discrepancies exist in oceanic transport intensity and location.

Increased CO2 causes a 10% rise in total meridional transport.

Abstract

We analyze the PCMDI/CMIP3 simulations performed by climate models (CMs) using pre-industrial and SRESA1B scenarios. Relatively large biases are present for most CMs when global energy budgets and when the atmospheric, oceanic, and land budgets are considered. Apparently, the biases do not result from transient effects, but depend on the imperfect closure of the energy cycle in the fluid components and on inconsistencies over land. Therefore, the planetary emission temperature is underestimated. This may explain the CMs' cold bias. In the pre-industrial scenario, CMs agree on the location in the mid-latitudes of the peaks of the meridional atmospheric enthalpy transport, while large discrepancies exist on the intensity. Disagreements on the location and intensity of the oceanic transport peaks are serious. With increased $CO_2$ concentration, a small poleward shift of the peak and an increase in the intensity of the atmospheric transport of up to 10% are detected in both hemispheres. Instead, most CMs feature a decrease in the oceanic transport intensity in the northern hemisphere and an equatorward shift of the peak in both hemispheres. The Bjerkens compensation mechanism is active both on climatological and interannual time scales. The peak of the total meridional transport is typically around $35^\circ$ in both hemispheres and scenarios, whereas disagreements on the intensity are relevant. With increased $CO_2$ concentration, the total transport increases by up to 10%, thus contributing to polar amplification. Advances in the representation of physical processes are definitely needed for providing a self-consistent representation of climate as a non-equilibrium thermodynamical system.