A transient coupled general circulation model (CGCM) simulation of the past 3 million years

• Published in: Climate of the Past
• Main Authors: Yun, Kyung-Sook, Timmermann, Axel, Lee, Sun-Seon, Willeit, Matteo, Ganopolski, Andrey, Jadhav, Jyoti
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1951-2023; https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/19/1951/2023/

Driven primarily by variations in the earth's axis wobble, tilt, and orbit eccentricity, our planet experienced massive glacial/interglacial reorganizations of climate and atmospheric CO 2 concentrations during the Pleistocene (2.58 million years ago (Ma)–11.7 thousand years ago (ka)). Even after decades of research, the underlying climate response mechanisms to these astronomical forcings have not been fully understood. To further quantify the sensitivity of the earth system to orbital-scale forcings, we conducted an unprecedented quasi-continuous coupled general climate model simulation with the Community Earth System Model version 1.2 (CESM1.2, ∼3.75 ∘ horizontal resolution), which covers the climatic history of the past 3 million years (3 Myr). In addition to the astronomical insolation changes, CESM1.2 is forced by estimates of CO 2 and ice-sheet topography which were obtained from a simulation previously conducted with the CLIMBER-2 earth system model of intermediate complexity. Our 3 Ma simulation consists of 42 transient interglacial/glacial simulation chunks, which were partly run in parallel to save computing time. The chunks were subsequently merged, accounting for spin-up and overlap effects to yield a quasi-continuous trajectory. The computer model data were compared against a plethora of paleo-proxy data and large-scale climate reconstructions. For the period from the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT, ∼1 Ma) to the late Pleistocene we find good agreement between simulated and reconstructed temperatures in terms of phase and amplitude ( −5.7 ∘ C temperature difference between Last Glacial Maximum and Holocene). For the earlier part (3–1 Ma), differences in orbital-scale variability occur between model simulation and the reconstructions, indicating potential biases in the applied CO 2 forcing. Our model-proxy data comparison also extends to the westerlies, which show unexpectedly large variance on precessional timescales, and hydroclimate variables in major monsoon regions. Eccentricity-modulated ...