Climate model benchmarking with glacial and mid-Holocene climates

S. P. Harrison, P. J. Bartlein, S. Brewer, I. C. Prentice, M. Boyd, I. Hessler, K. Holmgren, K. Izumi, K. Willis

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    165 Citations (Scopus)
    119 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Past climates provide a test of models' ability to predict climate change. We present a comprehensive evaluation of state-of-the-art models against Last Glacial Maximum and mid-Holocene climates, using reconstructions of land and ocean climates and simulations from the Palaeoclimate Modelling and Coupled Modelling Intercomparison Projects. Newer models do not perform better than earlier versions despite higher resolution and complexity. Differences in climate sensitivity only weakly account for differences in model performance. In the glacial, models consistently underestimate land cooling (especially in winter) and overestimate ocean surface cooling (especially in the tropics). In the mid-Holocene, models generally underestimate the precipitation increase in the northern monsoon regions, and overestimate summer warming in central Eurasia. Models generally capture large-scale gradients of climate change but have more limited ability to reproduce spatial patterns. Despite these common biases, some models perform better than others.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)671-688
    Number of pages18
    JournalClimate Dynamics
    Volume43
    Issue number3-4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Aug 2014

    Bibliographical note

    Copyright The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

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