Climate drift in an ocean model coupled to a simple, perfectly matched atmosphere

Abstract

A very simple, diffusive energy balance atmosphere is coupled to the GFDL ocean circulation model. This provides a useful tool for analyzing climate drift in the ocean model after coupling, and may be used to assess various schemes for minimizing such drift. In the experiment reported here, the atmosphere is constructed in such a way that it provides the ocean model at the moment of coupling with the same fluxes as during spinup. The experiment is therefore equivalent to coupling a perfectly flux-corrected atmosphere model, and is used to investigate the response of the ocean model under these conditions. In spite of the steady, passive, flux-corrected atmosphere, the ocean model drifts to a new equilibrium state after coupling. The transition takes about 2000 years; the new state is characterized by different sites of deep convection and resulting changes in high-latitude SST and global deep temperatures. The mechanism for the transition is an instability of the oceanic convection patterns under the new feedback, felt after coupling. A similar state transition of the ocean model may be triggered by the coupling shock in fully coupled GCMs. If this is so, the transition would contaminate the results of climate scenario experiments, and it would explain part of the residual drift observed in coupled models in spite of the use of flux corrections.