Grid-point Atmospheric General Circulation Model Research Articles

On the Sensitivity of Short-Term Climate Prediction to Initial Atmospheric Conditions

Two different sets of ensemble hindcasting experiments were performed with a grid-point Atmospheric General Circulation Model (IAP9L2x2.5-AGCM) forced by actual observed and climatic surface sea temperature(SST), sea ice respectively for seventeen years(1988-2004).In each of set of experiment, there were three tests from three different initial atmospheric conditions . Then the sensitivity of short-term climate prediction to initial atmospheric conditions was investigated. A simple correlation analysis showed that the influence of initial atmospheric conditions in the tropics is greater than that in the extratropics , so initial atmospheric conditions play a very important role on short-term climate prediction, especially in China. In addition, the initial atmospheric conditions of smoothing 5-day NCEP-DOE reanalysis2 data were the best from most of meteorological variables in this study.

An Assessment of MJO and Tropical Waves Simulated by Different Versions of the GAMIL Model

Simulated outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) outputs by two versions of the grid-point atmospheric general circulation model (GAMIL) were analyzed to assess the influences of improvements in cloud micro- physics and convective parameterization schemes on the simulation of the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) and other tropical waves. The wavenumber-frequency spectral analysis was applied to isolate dominant modes of con- vectively coupled equatorial waves, including the MJO, Kelvin, equatorial Rossby (ER), mixed Rossby-gravity (MRG), and inertio-gravity (IG) waves. The performances of different versions of the GAMIL model (version 1.0 (GAMIL1.0) and version 2.0 (GAMIL2.0)) were evalu- ated by comparing the power spectrum distributions of these waves among GAMIL1.0, GAMIL2.0, and observa- tional data. GAMIL1.0 shows a weak MJO signal, with the maximum variability occurring separately at wavenumbers 1 and 4 rather than being concentrated on wavenumbers 1-3, suggesting that GAMIL1.0 could not effectively capture the intraseasonal variability. However, GAMIL2.0 is able to effectively reproduce both the symmetric and anti-symmetric waves, and the significant spectra of the MJO, Kelvin, and MRG waves are in agreement with observational data, indicating that the ability of GAMIL2.0 to simulate the MJO and other tropical waves is enhanced by improving the cloud mi- crophysics and convective parameterization schemes and implying that such improvements are crucial to further improving this model's performance.  Keywords: GAMIL model, MJO, tropical waves Citation: Mao, J.-Y., and L.-J. Li, 2012: An assessment of MJO and tropical waves simulated by different ver- sions of the GAMIL model, Atmos. Oceanic Sci. Lett., 5, 26-31.

Improved ENSO simulation in regional coupled GCM using regressive correction method

A regressive correction method is presented with the primary goal of improving ENSO simulation in regional coupled GCM. It focuses on the correction of ocean-atmosphere exchanged fluxes. On the basis of numerical experiments and analysis, the method can be described as follows: first, driving the ocean model with heat and momentum flux computed from a long-term observation data set; the produced SST is then applied to force the AGCM as its boundary condition; after that the AGCM’s simulation and the corresponding observation can be correlated by a linear regressive formula. Thus the regressive correction coefficients for the simulation with spatial and temporal variation could be obtained by linear fitting. Finally the coefficients are applied to redressing the variables used for the calculation of the exchanged air-sea flux in the coupled model when it starts integration. This method together with the anomaly coupling method is tested in a regional coupled model, which is composed of a global grid-point atmospheric general circulation model and a high-resolution tropical Pacific Ocean model. The comparison of the results shows that it is superior to the anomaly coupling both in reducing the coupled model ‘climate drift’ and in improving the ENSO simulation in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

The mid—Holocene climate simulated by a grid—point AGCM coupled with a biome model

The climate simulation for the mid–Holocene about 6000 years before present (6 ka BP) is carried out with a grid–point atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) coupled with a biome model. This coupled model simulation employs orbital parameters of 6 ka BP but present forcing conditions. Results show that large–scale climate differences between now and then are substantial in summer with dramatically strong African–Asian monsoon flow and precipitation during mid–Holocene. Although the results of this coupled model are qualitatively close to those of the AGCM, the coupled model shows a larger changes in both precipitation and temperature in summer over the North African monsoon area with weaker cooling in the Northern autumn.

Iap general circulation models: a first step towards developing a local area model for weather prediction in nigeria

In an earlier study, the Atmospheric Models Intercomparison Program (AMIP) simulations of African climate using the nine-layer gridpoint atmospheric general circulation model were found to be closely related to the observed European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) temperature data at 500 and 850 hPa. This paper presents the analysis of the simulation of African climate using the Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System Model (IAP / LASG GOALS) and the nine-layer spectral general circulation model rhomboidally truncated at zonal wave number 15 (L9R15) developed at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. Both model simulations were not significantly different from the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Reanalysis monthly mean data for 1980-1995 in the case of surface air temperature, sea level pressure and precipitation, with the GOALS reproducing the seasonal mean climate over Africa better. The implications of the encouraging results in developing a local area model for Nigeria have been discussed. The great role of topography in the developing of general circulation models for numerical modelling of weather and climate has been stressed.

Parallelization and Distribution of a Coupled Atmosphere–Ocean General Circulation Model

Abstract The distribution of a climate model across homogeneous and heterogeneous computer environments with nodes that can reside at geographically different locations is investigated. This scientific application consists of an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) coupled to an oceanic general circulation model (OGCM). Three levels of code decomposition are considered to achieve a high degree of parallelism and to mask communication with computation. First, the domains of both the gridpoint AGCM and OGCM are divided into subdomains for which calculations an carded out concurrently (domain decomposition). Second, the model is decomposed based on the diversity of tasks performed by its major components (task decompositions). Three such components are identified: (a) AGCM/physics which computes the effects on the grid-scale flow of subgrid-scale processes such as convection and turbulent mixing; (b) AGCM/dynamics, which computes the evolution of the flow governed by the primitive equations; and (c) ...