Factors Affecting Climate Sensitivity in Global Coupled Models

Abstract

Abstract Four global coupled climate models with different combinations of atmosphere, ocean, land surface, and sea ice components are compared in idealized forcing (1% CO2 increase) experiments. The four models are the Climate System Model (CSM), the Parallel Climate Model (PCM), the PCM/CSM Transition Model (PCTM), and the Community Climate System Model (CCSM). The hypothesis is posed that models with similar atmospheric model components should show a similar globally averaged dynamically coupled response to increasing CO2 in spite of different ocean, sea ice, and land formulations. Conversely, models with different atmospheric components should be most different in terms of the coupled globally averaged response. The two models with the same atmosphere and sea ice but different ocean components (PCM and PCTM) have the most similar response to increasing CO2, followed closely by CSM with comparable atmosphere and different ocean and sea ice from either PCM or PCTM. The fourth model, CCSM, has a differen...