TY - JOUR
T1 - Metrics for the evaluation of the southern ocean in coupled climate models and earth system models
AU - Russell, Joellen L.
AU - Kamenkovich, Igor
AU - Bitz, Cecilia
AU - Ferrari, Raffaele
AU - Gille, Sarah T.
AU - Goodman, Paul J.
AU - Hallberg, Robert
AU - Johnson, Kenneth
AU - Khazmutdinova, Karina
AU - Marinov, Irina
AU - Mazloff, Matthew
AU - Riser, Stephen
AU - Sarmiento, Jorge Louis
AU - Speer, Kevin
AU - Talley, Lynne D.
AU - Wanninkhof, Rik
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank US CLIVAR and OCB for their support of the Southern Ocean Working Group (SOWG). We had specifically like to thank Mike Patterson, Heather Benway, and Kristan Uhlenbrock for their contributions, guidance, and support, as well as participants of the 2014 Workshop Ocean’s Carbon and Heat Uptake: Uncertainties and Metrics (Russell et al., 2015). We want to thank the members of the SOCCOM team for their participation and support. We also would like to thank J. Robbie Toggweiler and an anonymous reviewer for their critical and supportive evaluation of this study-it is significantly better due to their input. All simulation data are available through the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF, formerly PCMDI, https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/ esgf-llnl/), the state estimate data are at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (http://sose.ucsd.edu/), and the observations on which the metrics are based can be found at: World Ocean Atlas 2013 (https://www.nodc.noaa. gov/OC5/woa13/), CFSR (https://rda. ucar.edu/pub/cfsr.html), NCEP/NCEP2 (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/ gridded/reanalysis/), and GLODAPv2 (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/ GLODAPv2/). The authors wish to acknowledge use of the Ferret program for analysis and graphics in this paper: Ferret is a product of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (http://ferret.pmel.noaa. gov/Ferret/). This work was sponsored, in part, by NSF’s Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) Project under the NSF Award PLR-1425989, with additional support from NOAA and NASA. Logistical support for SOCCOM in the Antarctic was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation through the U.S. Antarctic Program. Funding for this work was also provided under NSF Award PLR- 1246247, '‘The Southern Ocean in a Warming World: Winds, Carbon and Heat.'' The authors are not aware of any conflicts of interest.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018. The Authors.
PY - 2018/1/1
Y1 - 2018/1/1
N2 - The Southern Ocean is central to the global climate and the global carbon cycle, and to the climate’s response to increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, as it ventilates a large fraction of the global ocean volume. Global coupled climate models and earth system models, however, vary widely in their simulations of the Southern Ocean and its role in, and response to, the ongoing anthropogenic trend. Due to the region’s complex water-mass structure and dynamics, Southern Ocean carbon and heat uptake depend on a combination of winds, eddies, mixing, buoyancy fluxes, and topography. Observationally based metrics are critical for discerning processes and mechanisms, and for validating and comparing climate and earth system models. New observations and understanding have allowed for progress in the creation of observationally based data/model metrics for the Southern Ocean. Metrics presented here provide a means to assess multiple simulations relative to the best available observations and observational products. Climate models that perform better according to these metrics also better simulate the uptake of heat and carbon by the Southern Ocean. This report is not strictly an intercomparison, but rather a distillation of key metrics that can reliably quantify the '‘accuracy’' of a simulation against observed, or at least observable, quantities. One overall goal is to recommend standardization of observationally based benchmarks that the modeling community should aspire to meet in order to reduce uncertainties in climate projections, and especially uncertainties related to oceanic heat and carbon uptake.
AB - The Southern Ocean is central to the global climate and the global carbon cycle, and to the climate’s response to increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, as it ventilates a large fraction of the global ocean volume. Global coupled climate models and earth system models, however, vary widely in their simulations of the Southern Ocean and its role in, and response to, the ongoing anthropogenic trend. Due to the region’s complex water-mass structure and dynamics, Southern Ocean carbon and heat uptake depend on a combination of winds, eddies, mixing, buoyancy fluxes, and topography. Observationally based metrics are critical for discerning processes and mechanisms, and for validating and comparing climate and earth system models. New observations and understanding have allowed for progress in the creation of observationally based data/model metrics for the Southern Ocean. Metrics presented here provide a means to assess multiple simulations relative to the best available observations and observational products. Climate models that perform better according to these metrics also better simulate the uptake of heat and carbon by the Southern Ocean. This report is not strictly an intercomparison, but rather a distillation of key metrics that can reliably quantify the '‘accuracy’' of a simulation against observed, or at least observable, quantities. One overall goal is to recommend standardization of observationally based benchmarks that the modeling community should aspire to meet in order to reduce uncertainties in climate projections, and especially uncertainties related to oceanic heat and carbon uptake.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85046283847&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85046283847&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/2017JC013461
DO - 10.1002/2017JC013461
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85046283847
SN - 2169-9291
VL - 123
SP - 3120-3143.
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
IS - 5
ER -