Climatology of the SKYHI Troposphere–Stratosphere–Mesosphere General Circulation Model

Abstract

Abstract The long-term mean climatology obtained from integrations conducted with different resolutions of the GFDL “SKYHI” finite-difference general circulation model is examined. A number of improvements that have been made recently in the model are also described. The versions considered have 3° × 3.6°, 2° × 2.4°, and 1° × 1.2° latitude–longitude resolution, and in each case the model is run with 40 levels from the ground to 0.0096 mb. The integrations all employ a fixed climatological cycle of sea surface temperature. Over 25 years of integration with the 3° model and shorter integrations with the higher-resolution versions are analyzed. Attention is focused on the December–February and June–August periods. The model does a reasonable job of representing the atmospheric flow in the troposphere and lower stratosphere. The simulated tropospheric climatology has an interesting sensitivity to horizontal resolution. In common with several spectral GCMs that have been examined earlier, the surface zonal-mea...