Abstract
Abstract. The University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM) of intermediate complexity has been a useful tool in recent assessments of long-term climate changes, including both paleo-climate modelling and uncertainty assessments of future warming. Since the last official release of the UVic ESCM 2.9 and the two official updates during the last decade, considerable model development has taken place among multiple research groups. The new version 2.10 of the University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model presented here will be part of the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). More precisely it will be used in the intercomparison of Earth system models of intermediate complexity (EMIC), such as the C4MIP, the Carbon Dioxide Removal and Zero Emissions Commitment model intercomparison projects (CDR-MIP and ZECMIP, respectively). It now brings together and combines multiple model developments and new components that have come about since the last official release of the model. The main additions to the base model are (i) an improved biogeochemistry module for the ocean, (ii) a vertically resolved soil model including dynamic hydrology and soil carbon processes, and (iii) a representation of permafrost carbon. To set the foundation of its use, we here describe the UVic ESCM 2.10 and evaluate results from transient historical simulations against observational data. We find that the UVic ESCM 2.10 is capable of reproducing changes in historical temperature and carbon fluxes well. The spatial distribution of many ocean tracers, including temperature, salinity, phosphate and nitrate, also agree well with observed tracer profiles. The good performance in the ocean tracers is connected to an improved representation of ocean physical properties. For the moment, the main biases that remain are a vegetation carbon density that is too high in the tropics, a higher than observed change in the ocean heat content (OHC) and an oxygen utilization in the Southern Ocean that is too low. All of these biases will be addressed in the next updates to the model.
Highlights
The University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM) of intermediate complexity has been a useful tool in recent assessments of long-term climate changes including paleo-climate modelling (e.g. Alexander et al, 2015; Bagniewski et al, 2017; Handiani et al, 2012; Meissner et al, 2003; Menviel et al, 2014), carbon cycle dynamics (e.g. Matthews et al, 2009b; Matthews and Caldeira, 2008; Montenegro et al, 2007; Schmittner et al, 2008; Tokarska and Zickfeld, 2015; Zickfeld et al, 2009, 2011, 2016) and cli
We evaluate the performance of the different components of the UVic ESCM version 2.10 based on observations
The emissions-driven, transient historical climate simulation of the UVic ESCM version 2.10 forced with CMIP6 data reproduces well the historical temperature trend in the 20th century of 0.75 ± 0.21 ◦C as derived from the Global Warming Index (Haustein et al, 2017) (Table 1; Fig. 2)
Summary
The University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM) of intermediate complexity has been a useful tool in recent assessments of long-term climate changes including paleo-climate modelling (e.g. Alexander et al, 2015; Bagniewski et al, 2017; Handiani et al, 2012; Meissner et al, 2003; Menviel et al, 2014), carbon cycle dynamics (e.g. Matthews et al, 2009b; Matthews and Caldeira, 2008; Montenegro et al, 2007; Schmittner et al, 2008; Tokarska and Zickfeld, 2015; Zickfeld et al, 2009, 2011, 2016) and cli-. As an Earth system model of intermediate complexity, the UVic ESCM has a comparably low computational cost (4.6–11.5 h per 100 years on a simple desktop computer, depending on the computational power of the machine) while still providing a comprehensive carbon cycle model with a fully represented ocean physics. It is a well-suited tool to, for example, perform large perturbed parameter ensembles to constrain process level uncertainties (e.g. MacDougall and Knutti, 2016; Mengis et al, 2018). To set the foundation of its use, we will in the following describe the UVic ESCM 2.10 (Sect. 2.1.) and the newly formatted historical CMIP6 forcing that has been and will be used (Sect. 2.2.), explicitly describe changes that have been implemented in the UVic ESCM with respect to the previously published versions (Sect. 2.3.), and evaluate results from transient historical simulations against observational data (Sect. 3.)
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