Inter-model spread of the climatological annual mean Hadley circulation and its relationship with the double ITCZ bias in CMIP5

Abstract

In the present paper, we study the climatological annual mean Hadley circulation simulated by 47 coupled atmospheric and ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) of the phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Our results show that the climatological annual mean states of the Hadley circulation, i.e., strength, central line, and poleward boundaries of the Hadley cells, have a large inter-model spread. The strength of the Hadley cells, i.e., the maximum value of mean meridional streamfunction (MMS), varies from 7.0 × 1010 to 11.1 × 1010 kg s− 1. The variation range is about half of the multi-model ensemble mean strength of about 8.7 × 1010 kg s− 1. The central line location between the two Hadley cells varies from 3.7° S to 7.8° N, and the poleward boundary latitudes have a variation range of 5.5° in latitude. In contrast, inter-model spreads of the Hadley circulation are much smaller in reanalyses. Using a method of inter-model empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of annual-mean MMS, we show that the first principal component (PC1) is closely correlated with the central line latitudes of the Hadley cells, and that the second principal component (PC2) has a high correlation with the poleward boundaries. Both PC1 and PC2 are significantly correlated with the strength of the Hadley cells. Regressions of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and precipitation on PC1 and PC2 show that EOF1 is associated with the well-known double intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) problem in AOGCMs, and that EOF2 is related to the cold tongue bias. The results suggest that the large inter-model spread of the climatological mean Hadley circulation is largely due to the double ITCZ and cold tongue biases, and that the key for improving the simulation performance of the Hadley circulation is to reduce the double ITCZ and cold tongue bias in AOGCMs.