Abstract
This study presents a multiscale assessment of the springtime U.S. Mesoscale Convective Systems (MCSs) in the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL)’s Atmosphere Model version 4 (AM4). In AM4, MCSs exhibit lower intensity but longer duration, producing more precipitation compared to observation. The overall MCS activity demonstrates a “location bias” with its peak shifting from the Southern Great Plains to the Midwest in AM4, causing an eastward shift in associated precipitation. However, the dry bias of MCS precipitation over the Great Plains due to this shift is compensated by additional precipitation from amplified extratropical cyclone activities. Further analysis reveals that AM4 effectively reproduces the spatiotemporal distribution and relative frequency contribution of large-scale forcing patterns driving MCS genesis. The MCS location bias emerges under all forms of large-scale forcing patterns and is further attributed to local dynamic and thermodynamic factors including weaker surface lows, eastward-shifted fronts, and suppressed low-level jets (LLJs). Here we argue that the MCS location bias results from AM4 biases in both synoptic-mesoscale anomalies (i.e., fronts and LLJs) and seasonal mean circulations. The lack of two-way air-sea interaction in AM4 creates a hemispheric-scale sea level pressure bias, which is ultimately responsible for a seasonal mean northerly bias in lower-tropospheric winds and the subsequent weakening of LLJs. The existence of such biases in prescribed sea surface temperature (SST) experiments implies the need for extra caution when utilizing extended-range forecasts for MCSs over the continental U.S.
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Data availability
The GFDL AM4 data are obtained from collaborations with Wenhao Dong affiliated at GFDL and Yi Ming affiliated at Boston College. The global merged geostationary satellite infrared brightness temperature dataset is produced by the NOAA Climate Prediction Center and archived at the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) at https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/GPM_MERGIR_1/summary. The observational precipitation comes from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) global gridded daily precipitation data (https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.cpc.globalprecip.html). The atmospheric variables on the single level and all pressure levels come from the fifth generation of ECMWF reanalysis dataset (ERA5) and are available on the Climate Data Store (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/#!/search?text=ERA5&type=dataset).
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that led to significant improvement of the paper. This study is support by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) through Grant AGS-2032532 and by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through Grant NA22OAR4310606. Deng is also partly supported by the NOAA through Grant NA20OAR4310380.
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You, Z., Deng, Y., Ming, Y. et al. A multiscale assessment of the springtime U.S. mesoscale convective systems in the NOAA GFDL AM4. Clim Dyn (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-024-07114-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-024-07114-4