Simulation of the Climate of the Last Five Centuries

• Main Authors: E. Zorita, H. von Storch, F. J. Gonzalez-Rouco, Geesthacht Germany, U. Cubasch, Freie Universitt Berlin, J. Luterbacher, S. Legutke, I. Fischer-bruns, U. Schlese
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht GmbH; Greenland; North Atlantic; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.15.7199; http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/pdf/gkss_2003_12.pdf

In a transient climate simulation of the last 500 years with a coupled atmosphere-ocean model driven by estimated solar variability, volcanic activity and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases for the last centuries, the model simulates a climate colder than present conditions almost globally, and the degree of cooling is larger than most empirical reconstructions. The model simulates two clear minima of the global mean temperature around 1700 A.D. (the Late Maunder Minimum) and around 1820 A.D. (the Dalton Minimum). The temperature trends simulated after the recovery from these minima are as large as the observed warming in the 20th century. Additionally, in the Late Maunder Minimum the simulated temperature field in Europe agrees well with empirical reconstructions from proxy-data, with an intense drop of air-temperature in the North Atlantic ocean, an extensive sea-ice cover south of Greenland, lower salinity in North Atlantic at high latitudes, and reduced intensities of the Golf Stream and the Kuroshio Stream.