Impacts of Nudged Sea Surface Temperature on Tropical Precipitation, Moisture, and Vertical Velocity in an Earth System Model

Abstract

Abstract Understanding the effect of the nudged sea surface temperature (SST) on precipitation simulation is important in Earth system models. In this study, we analyzed the role of nudged SST and air–sea interaction in precipitation simulation by using the Chinese Academy of Sciences Earth System Model version 2 (CAS-ESM2). CAS-ESM2 fully coupled runs with and without nudged tropical SST to observations, and the atmosphere-only runs (AMIP) are comprehensively evaluated against observations and reanalysis over the tropical ocean from 1982 to 2015. The precipitation is affected by the nudged SST and air–sea interaction by means of changes in both thermodynamic and dynamic processes. Simulation with the nudged SST dramatically improves the climatological precipitation fields over the tropics and four regional areas. As the simulated SSTs are nudged toward the observations, CAS-ESM2 well reproduces the mean annual values in column water vapor (CWV), vertical structure of specific humidity, and large-scale circulation. The nudged SST run also captures a wide range of the complex interactions between SST, precipitation, moisture, and large-scale circulations, as measured by the monthly relationships and bivariate probability distribution function. The biases in heavy precipitation associated with the CWV induced under moist conditions are decreased by applying the nudging technique. In particular, the nudging run performs better in reproducing the SST–precipitation covariability than the control and AMIP runs. However, CAS-ESM2 with nudged tropical SST simulates the degradation of strong ascending motions, which is similar to the AMIP runs and reflects the deviation of the atmospheric model. Our results confirm that the fully coupled run using the nudged SST is a method for improving the precipitation simulation across the tropical oceans. Significance Statement Understanding the sources of precipitation errors in Earth system models is challenging because of the complex error compensation and air–sea interaction. When the simulated SST is nudged toward observations, few studies have focused on the changes in both thermodynamic and dynamic processes via atmospheric large-scale circulation, moisture, and changes in the SST–precipitation relationship at the same time. Here, we carry out two CMIP6 historical experiments (a fully coupled control run and an SST-nudged run) and the atmosphere-only runs by using CAS-ESM2 from 1982 to 2015. Then, we validate and analyze the climatology of SST, precipitation, moisture, large-scale circulation, and their complex interactions over the tropical oceans and different regional areas. The fully coupled nudged-SST run outperforms the fully free coupled run in reproducing the climatology and complex interactions between SST, precipitation, moisture, and large-scale circulations across the tropics. Moreover, the biases in the SST–precipitation covariability are significantly alleviated in the nudging experiments. We confirmed that the SST nudging method is a potential way to improve precipitation simulation in CAS-ESM2.