Precipitation Reproducibility over Tropical Oceans and Its Relationship to the Double ITCZ Problem in CMIP3 and MIROC5 Climate Models

Abstract

Abstract Precipitation reproducibility over the tropical oceans in climate models is examined. Models participating in phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) and the current (fifth) version Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate (MIROC5) developed by the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, National Institute for Environmental Studies, and Research Institute for Global Change (AORI/NIES/RIGC) are analyzed. Scores of a pattern similarity between precipitation in the models and that in observations are evaluated. The low score models (LSMs) overestimate (underestimate) precipitation over large-scale subsidence (ascending) regions compared to the high score models (HSMs). The sensitivity of deep convection to sea surface temperature (SST) and large-scale subsidence is examined; analysis suggests that dynamical suppression of deep convection by the entrainment of environmental dry air over the subsidence region is very weak, and deep convection follows SST closely in LSMs. For example, deep convective activity is identified over the southeastern Pacific in LSMs, which corresponds to the double intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) problem. It is suggested that the double ITCZ is associated not only with the local SST but also with the precipitation schemes that control deep convection over the entire tropical oceans. The current version, MIROC5, reproduces precipitation distributions significantly better than the older versions. Precipitation in MIROC5 has a weaker correlation with SST and a stronger correlation with environmental humidity than that in LSMs. The realistic representation of entrainment in regions with dynamical suppression is suggested to be a key factor for better reproducibility of precipitation distributions.