Abstract
Abstract. The Stratosphere–troposphere Processes And their Role in Climate (SPARC) Quasi-Biennial Oscillation initiative (QBOi) aims to improve the fidelity of tropical stratospheric variability in general circulation and Earth system models by conducting coordinated numerical experiments and analysis. In the equatorial stratosphere, the QBO is the most conspicuous mode of variability. Five coordinated experiments have therefore been designed to (i) evaluate and compare the verisimilitude of modelled QBOs under present-day conditions, (ii) identify robustness (or alternatively the spread and uncertainty) in the simulated QBO response to commonly imposed changes in model climate forcings (e.g. a doubling of CO2 amounts), and (iii) examine model dependence of QBO predictability. This paper documents these experiments and the recommended output diagnostics. The rationale behind the experimental design and choice of diagnostics is presented. To facilitate scientific interpretation of the results in other planned QBOi studies, consistent descriptions of the models performing each experiment set are given, with those aspects particularly relevant for simulating the QBO tabulated for easy comparison.
Highlights
Over the last decade or so, there has been a move toward global climate, Earth system, and weather forecasting models having properly resolved stratospheres and elevated upper boundaries
While Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) initiative (QBOi) is focused on modelling studies, it is closely aligned with other Stratosphere–troposphere Processes And their Role in Climate (SPARC) activities including the SPARC Reanalysis Intercomparison Project (S-RIP; Fujiwara et al, 2017) providing supporting analysis of observations and reanalyses and the SPARC gravity waves activity (Alexander and Sato, 2015) that is studying an important driver of the QBO
The purpose of this paper is to describe the experiments to be used in phase 1 of QBOi and provide supporting documentation for other publications analysing and interpreting the output from the experiments
Summary
Over the last decade or so, there has been a move toward global climate, Earth system, and weather forecasting models having properly resolved stratospheres and elevated upper boundaries. The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Stratosphere–troposphere Processes And their Role in Climate (SPARC) core project has promoted a new QBO initiative (QBOi) to improve the simulation of tropical stratospheric variability in general circulation models and Earth system models (GCMs and ESMs). Strahan et al, 2015) or the dynamical teleconnections to the extra-tropics (Anstey and Shepherd, 2014), and their subsequent surface climate and weather impacts These aspects are expected to be included more prominently in the phase of QBOi. The purpose of this paper is to describe the experiments to be used in phase 1 of QBOi and provide supporting documentation for other publications analysing and interpreting the output from the experiments. An important part of the multi-model analysis and interpretation of the experiments is the availability of a consistent set of relevant diagnostics from each model For this QBOi follows best practices and, where possible, variable and file naming conventions of CMIP5 and CCMI (see the Supplement).
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