Weak interannual variability of sea–air carbon flux in the Tropical Pacific Ocean simulated by CMIP6 models

Abstract

Air–sea carbon fluxes (FCO2) simulated by 20 CMIP6 models in the pre-industrial control experiments are analyzed. 13 models can simulate the dominant role of the equatorial Pacific (EP) in the interannual variation of global FCO2, which is related to ENSO. Compared with CMIP5, CMIP6 has improved the simulation performance of interannual variation of global FCO2, while for the simulation of FCO2 in the tropical Pacific, most CMIP6 models inherit some biases of their CMIP5 versions. For example, the simulated interannual fluctuation of precipitation leads to excessive interannual variations of the dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) concentration and then of the partial pressure of CO2 at the sea surface (pCO2sea) in the western tropical Pacific, especially in the warm pool. Another inherited disadvantage is the underestimated interannual fluctuation of FCO2 in the central tropical Pacific from 120ºW to 180ºW. The underestimation includes two aspects: the simulated intensity of the fluctuation is weak, and the negative response region of CO2 outgassing to the ENSO index is narrow. There are two main reasons for the weak interannual fluctuation strength of FCO2 in the models. One is that most models cannot represent the strong interannual variation of 10 m wind speed (vm10) in the central tropical Pacific, and the other is that the interannual fluctuation of pCO2sea in the central tropical Pacific in most models is too weak, which is related to the overestimated interannual variation of sea surface temperature (SST) here. The underestimated spatial range of negative response of CO2 outgassing to the ENSO index is mainly induced by the simulated interannual variations of the vm10 and of the vertical transport of DIC which is related to the vertical upwelling rate. According to the simulation results of CMIP6, the improvement of the simulation performance of the interannual variations of the global and tropical Pacific FCO2 is still dependent on the improvement of the simulation performance of physical climate, such as wind fields, SST, and the entrainment velocity at the bottom of the mixed layer.