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Abstract. Climate simulation uncertainties arise from internal variability, model structure, and external forcings. Model intercomparisons (such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project; CMIP) and single-model large ensembles have provided insight into uncertainty sources. Under the Community Earth System Model (CESM) project, large ensembles have been performed for CESM2 (a CMIP6-era model) and CESM1 (a CMIP5-era model). We refer to these as CESM2-LE and CESM1-LE. The external forcing used in these simulations has changed to be consistent with their CMIP generation. As a result, differences between CESM2-LE and CESM1-LE ensemble means arise from changes in both model structure and forcing. Here we present new ensemble simulations which allow us to separate the influences of these model structural and forcing differences. Our new CESM2 simulations are run with CMIP5 forcings equivalent to those used in the CESM1-LE. We find a strong influence of historical forcing uncertainty due to aerosol effects on simulated climate. For the historical period, forcing drives reduced global warming and ocean heat uptake in CESM2-LE relative to CESM1-LE that is counteracted by the influence of model structure. The influence of the model structure and forcing vary across the globe, and the Arctic exhibits a distinct signal that contrasts with the global mean. For the 21st century, the importance of scenario forcing differences (SSP3–7.0 for CESM2-LE and RCP8.5 for CESM1-LE) is evident. The new simulations presented here allow us to diagnose the influence of model structure on 21st century change, despite large scenario forcing differences, revealing that differences in the meridional distribution of warming are caused by model structure. Feedback analysis reveals that clouds and their impact on shortwave radiation explain many of these structural differences between CESM2 and CESM1. In the Arctic, albedo changes control transient climate evolution differences due to structural differences between CESM2 and CESM1.
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The Response of Precipitation Extremes to the Twentieth‐ and Twenty‐First‐Century Global Temperature Change in a Comprehensive Suite of CESM1 Large Ensemble Simulation: Revisiting the Role of Forcing Agents Vs. the Role of Forcing Magnitudes
Abstract The response of precipitation extremes (PEs) to global warming is found to be nonlinear in Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1) and other global climate models (Pendergrass et al., 2019), which led to the concern that it is not accurate to approximate the response of PE to a single forcing as the difference between simulations with all forcing agents and those that exclude one specific forcing. This calls into question previous model‐based results that the sensitivity of PE with warming due to aerosol forcing is significantly larger than that due to greenhouse gases (GHGs). We reevaluate the PE sensitivity to GHGs and aerosols using available CESM1 ensemble simulations. We show that although the PE response to warming is nonlinear in CESM1, especially for the high warming projected in the twenty‐first‐century, PE sensitivity to aerosols is still significantly stronger than that due to GHGs when the comparison is made within similar warming regimes to avoid the bias induced by the nonlinear behavior. But the difference is smaller than previously estimated. We also conclude that the additivity assumption is largely valid to isolate the PE response due to aerosol forcing from the paired simulations including the “all forcing” experiment when the warming regime is small (e.g., 1°C–2°C in the next few decades when aerosol forcing is projected to decline and becomes a major source of uncertainty for model projection).
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- Award ID(s):
- 1841308
- PAR ID:
- 10362140
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Earth and Space Science
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2333-5084
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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