Importance of the advection scheme for the simulation of water isotopes over Antarctica by atmospheric general circulation models: A case study for present-day and Last Glacial Maximum with LMDZ-iso

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that the choice of advection scheme in atmospheric models critically affects the simulation of water isotopes and temperature over Antarctica, impacting paleoclimate reconstructions for present-day and glacial periods.

Contribution

It shows that less diffusive horizontal advection schemes significantly reduce isotopic and temperature biases in GCMs over Antarctica, improving paleoclimate modeling accuracy.

Findings

Less diffusive advection reduces isotopic bias in precipitation.

Horizontal advection diffusion influences surface temperature.

Advection scheme choice impacts paleo-temperature reconstructions.

Abstract

Atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) are known to have a warm and isotopically enriched bias over Antarctica. We test here the hypothesis that these biases are partly consequences of a too diffusive advection. Exploiting the LMDZ-iso model, we show that a less diffusive representation of the advection, especially on the horizontal, is very important to reduce the bias in the isotopic contents of precipitation above this area. The choice of an appropriate representation of the advection is thus essential when using GCMs for paleoclimate applications based on polar water isotopes. Too much diffusive mixing along the poleward transport leads to overestimated isotopic contents in water vapor because dehydration by mixing follows a more enriched path than dehydration by Rayleigh distillation. The near-air surface temperature is also influenced, to a lesser extent, by the diffusive properties of the advection scheme directly via the advection of the air and indirectly via the radiative effects of changes in high cloud fraction and water vapor. A too diffusive horizontal advection increases the temperature and so also contributes to enrich the isotopic contents of water vapor over Antarctica through a reduction of the distillation. The temporal relationship, from Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to present-day conditions, between the mean annual near-air surface temperature and the water isotopic contents of precipitation for a specific location can also be impacted, with significant consequences on the paleo-temperature reconstruction from observed changes in water isotopes.