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The influence of South American regional climate on the simulation of the Southern Hemisphere extratropical circulation

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Abstract

This paper presents new modeling evidence showing the added value of high-resolution information from South America (SA) in the simulation of the Southern Hemisphere (SH) extratropical circulation. LMDZ, a coarse-resolution atmospheric global general circulation model constitutes the main tool for this investigation. Parallel to the control simulation, a two-way nesting (TWN) simulation of LMDZ is performed with an interactive coupling to the same model, but with a higher-resolution zoom over SA. The third simulation is a perfect boundary simulation for which re-analysis information from ERA-Interim is used to nudge LMDZ, but only over SA. Results indicate that enhanced resolution over SA improves the representation of the most important processes that influence extratropical eddy activity. The local improvement is followed by a better representation of the global extratropical circulation, especially in austral summer. The regional climate enhancement over SA has positive effects on simulation of the midlatitude jet position during the austral summer by significantly reducing the bias of the mean zonal kinetic energy outside the nudged zone. On the other hand, the wintertime general circulation outside the nudged-zone shows a limited bias-reduction for the regional-driven simulations, especially in the case of the TWN system. However, improvements of the TWN system compared to the control experiment are noticed in early stages of cyclone lifecycle, as it is identified in a better simulation of transient meridional heat transport and transient kinetic energy intensity. The findings of the present study suggest, thus, that improvements in resolution over SA effectively excite the simulation of the mean atmospheric circulation in the SH.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Argentinean agencies CONICET (PIP 11220150100402CO) and ANPCyT (PICT 2014-0887, PICT-2015-3097), and by the French National Program LEFE/INSU (AO2015-876370). Computing resources were allocated by GENCI/IDRIS, the computer center of CNRS. The first author was supported by CONICET and by the Saint Exupéry Program (MED-MAEDI).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), CONICET-UBA, Ciudad Universitaria, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Int. Guiraldes 2160, Pabellón 2, Piso 2, C1428EGA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Magdalena Falco, Claudio G. Menéndez & Andrea F. Carril

  2. Instituto Franco-Argentino sobre Estudios de Clima y sus Impactos (UMI3351-IFAECI/CNRS-CONICET-UBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Magdalena Falco, Claudio G. Menéndez & Andrea F. Carril

  3. Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Magdalena Falco & Claudio G. Menéndez

  4. Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD), CNRS, Sorbonne Université, École Normale Supérieure, École Polytechnique, Paris, France

    Magdalena Falco & Laurent Z. X. Li

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  1. Magdalena Falco
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  2. Laurent Z. X. Li
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Falco, M., Li, L.Z.X., Menéndez, C.G. et al. The influence of South American regional climate on the simulation of the Southern Hemisphere extratropical circulation. Clim Dyn 53, 6469–6488 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-04940-9

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