Abstract
Simulations of eight different regional climate models (RCMs) have been performed for the period September 1997–September 1998, which coincides with the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) project period. Each of the models employed approximately the same domain covering the western Arctic, the same horizontal resolution of 50 km, and the same boundary forcing. The models differ in their vertical resolution as well as in the treatments of dynamics and physical parameterizations. Both the common features and differences of the simulated spatiotemporal patterns of geopotential, temperature, cloud cover, and long-/shortwave downward radiation between the individual model simulations are investigated. With this work, we quantify the scatter among the models and therefore the magnitude of disagreement and unreliability of current Arctic RCM simulations. Even with the relatively constrained experimental design we notice a considerable scatter among the different RCMs. We found the largest across-model scatter in the 2 m temperature over land, in the surface radiation fluxes, and in the cloud cover which implies a reduced confidence level for these variables.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Randy Reeder who re-processed the original AVHRR data with fitting and filtering procedures to make them adequate for our ARCMIP purpose. We thank Jiping Liu for the discussion about the differences between different observational radiation data sets. We thank Elizabeth Cassano for work connected with the driving data. ERA40 data used in this study have been provided by ECMWF, and Paul Berrisford provided the ERA40 interannual standard deviation data. The atmospheric forcing data for the simulations are also from ECMWF, and are being served by the Joint Office for Science Support (JOSS) at UCAR. The SSM/I and AVHRR data are from National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder. AR, KD, CJ, KW, JHC, JEH, and MOK were supported by the European Union project GLIMPSE (EVK2-CT-2002–00164). MT and MZ are supported by the Swedish Research Council and by SWECLIM, and also acknowledge the support from the Naval Reaserch Laboratory, Monterey, USA. Support for JJC, AHL, and MJS was provided by NSF grant OPP-0084291 and OPP-0229649. Data management for ARCMIP and JAC were supported from a grant by NSF/IARC. We are grateful to Ines Hebestadt and Sabine Erxleben for preparing the graphics.
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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00382-006-0157-1
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Rinke, A., Dethloff, K., Cassano, J.J. et al. Evaluation of an ensemble of Arctic regional climate models: spatiotemporal fields during the SHEBA year. Clim Dyn 26, 459–472 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-005-0095-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-005-0095-3