Plausible effect of climate model bias on abrupt climate change simulations in Atlantic sector

Abstract

Although considerable progress towards reducing tropical climate biases in the tropical Pacific has been made in many current-generation of climate models over the past decades, reducing large biases and maintaining good agreement with the observations in the tropical Atlantic is still a major challenge and this deficiency may seriously degrade the credibility of the models in their simulation and projection of future climate change in the Atlantic sector. In this paper, we show that the bias in the eastern equatorial Atlantic has a major effect on sea-surface temperature (SST) response to a rapid change in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). By comparing identical water hosing experiments conducted with two different coupled general circulation models, we dissect oceanic mechanisms underlying the difference in models' SST response. The results show that the different SST response is plausibly attributed to systematic differences in the simulated tropical Atlantic ocean circulation. Therefore, in order to accurately simulate past abrupt climate changes and project future changes, the bias in climate models must be reduced.