Topic #6: Sensitivity of equilibrium climate on physical parameterizations
Background
A large part of the physical uncertainty when simulating the Earth’s atmosphere and future climate change stems from the uncertainties in physical parameterizations. Knowing which parameterization is responsible for largest part of uncertainty will help focus efforts into future model improvements. The role of parameterizations on climate can be studied in idealized, Earth-like aqua-planet simulations with prescribed zonally symmetric sea surface temperature.
Datasets
- 8 WRF aqua-planet simulation results; horizontal and vertical velocity, cloud cover, water vapor and temperature profiles, precipitation and top of the atmosphere radiative fluxes
Geographic foci
- global, tropics and subtropics (30S-30N), mid-latitudes and polar regions (45N-90N; 45S-90S)
Questions
- Which parameters and Earth’s regions are most sensitive to physical parameterizations?
- To which parameterizations are model results most sensitive?
- How different is Hadley cell in different experiments?
- How different are mid-latitude and polar clouds?
Approach
Compare zonally averaged vertical velocity, cloudiness, water vapor, temperature, velocity profiles, surface precipitation and fluxes at the top of the atmosphere. Investigate differences of conditionally sampled clouds and top of the atmosphere radiative fluxes.
List of numerical experiments and physical parameterizations
