climate sensitivity of the community climate strongsystem modelstrong.pdfVIP

Climate Sensitivity of the Community Climate System Model Version 4 1 2 3 3 3 C. M. Bitz , K.M. Shell , P.R. Gent , D. Bailey , G. Danabasoglu , K.C. Armour 1, M. M. Holland 3 , J.T. Kiehl 3 Abstract. Equilibrium climate sensitivity of the Community Climate System Model ◦ ◦ Version 4 (CCSM4) is 3.20 C for 1 horizontal resolution in each component. This is about a half degree Celsius higher than in the previous version (CCSM3). The transient climate sensitivity of CCSM4 at 1◦ resolution ◦ ◦ is 1.72 C, which is about 0.2 C higher than in CCSM3. These higher climate sensitivities in CCSM4 cannot be explained by the change to a pre- industrial baseline climate. We use the radiative kernel technique to show that from CCSM3 to CCSM4, the global mean lapse-rate feedback declines in magnitude, and the shortwave cloud feedback increases. These two warming effects are partially canceled by cooling due to slight decreases in the global mean water-vapor feedback and longwave cloud feedback from CCSM3 to CCSM4. A new formulation of the mixed-layer, slab ocean model in CCSM4 attempts to reproduce the SST and sea ice climatology from an integration with a full-depth ocean, and it is integrated with a dynamic sea ice model. These new features allow an isolation of the influence of ocean dynamical changes on the climate response when comparing integrations with the slab ocean and full-depth ocean. The transient climate response of the full-depth ocean version is 0.54 of the equilibrium climate sensitivity when estimated with the new slab ocean model version for both CCSM3 and CCSM4. We a