Orographic resolution driving the improvements associated with horizontal resolution increase in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes
In recent years much attention has been devoted to the investigation of the impact of increasing the horizontal resolution of global climate models. In the present work, a set of atmosphere-only idealized sensitivity simulations with EC-Earth3 has been designed to disentangle the relative roles of i...
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:3c19470b1ba34a8a8de854bae4aa5b10 2023-05-15T17:33:24+02:00 Orographic resolution driving the improvements associated with horizontal resolution increase in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes P. Davini F. Fabiano I. Sandu 2022-05-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-535-2022 https://doaj.org/article/3c19470b1ba34a8a8de854bae4aa5b10 EN eng Copernicus Publications https://wcd.copernicus.org/articles/3/535/2022/wcd-3-535-2022.pdf https://doaj.org/toc/2698-4016 doi:10.5194/wcd-3-535-2022 2698-4016 https://doaj.org/article/3c19470b1ba34a8a8de854bae4aa5b10 Weather and Climate Dynamics, Vol 3, Pp 535-553 (2022) Meteorology. Climatology QC851-999 article 2022 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-535-2022 2022-12-30T23:29:55Z In recent years much attention has been devoted to the investigation of the impact of increasing the horizontal resolution of global climate models. In the present work, a set of atmosphere-only idealized sensitivity simulations with EC-Earth3 has been designed to disentangle the relative roles of increasing the resolution of the resolved orography and of the atmospheric grid. Focusing on the Northern Hemisphere winter, it is shown that if the grid is refined while keeping the resolved orography unchanged, model biases are reduced only on some specific occasions. Conversely, increasing the resolved (or mean) orography is found to clearly reduce several important systematic model errors, including synoptic transient eddies, the North Atlantic jet stream variability, and atmospheric blocking frequency and duration. From an analysis of the radiation budget it is concluded that the large changes in radiative fluxes caused by the resolution increase – something commonly observed in climate models – have a relevant impact on the atmospheric circulation, partially offsetting the benefits obtained from the increase in orographic resolution. These findings point to the necessity of always tuning climate models to fully exploit the benefits of high horizontal resolution. Article in Journal/Newspaper North Atlantic Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Weather and Climate Dynamics 3 2 535 553 |
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Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
Meteorology. Climatology QC851-999 |
spellingShingle |
Meteorology. Climatology QC851-999 P. Davini F. Fabiano I. Sandu Orographic resolution driving the improvements associated with horizontal resolution increase in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes |
topic_facet |
Meteorology. Climatology QC851-999 |
description |
In recent years much attention has been devoted to the investigation of the impact of increasing the horizontal resolution of global climate models. In the present work, a set of atmosphere-only idealized sensitivity simulations with EC-Earth3 has been designed to disentangle the relative roles of increasing the resolution of the resolved orography and of the atmospheric grid. Focusing on the Northern Hemisphere winter, it is shown that if the grid is refined while keeping the resolved orography unchanged, model biases are reduced only on some specific occasions. Conversely, increasing the resolved (or mean) orography is found to clearly reduce several important systematic model errors, including synoptic transient eddies, the North Atlantic jet stream variability, and atmospheric blocking frequency and duration. From an analysis of the radiation budget it is concluded that the large changes in radiative fluxes caused by the resolution increase – something commonly observed in climate models – have a relevant impact on the atmospheric circulation, partially offsetting the benefits obtained from the increase in orographic resolution. These findings point to the necessity of always tuning climate models to fully exploit the benefits of high horizontal resolution. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
P. Davini F. Fabiano I. Sandu |
author_facet |
P. Davini F. Fabiano I. Sandu |
author_sort |
P. Davini |
title |
Orographic resolution driving the improvements associated with horizontal resolution increase in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes |
title_short |
Orographic resolution driving the improvements associated with horizontal resolution increase in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes |
title_full |
Orographic resolution driving the improvements associated with horizontal resolution increase in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes |
title_fullStr |
Orographic resolution driving the improvements associated with horizontal resolution increase in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes |
title_full_unstemmed |
Orographic resolution driving the improvements associated with horizontal resolution increase in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes |
title_sort |
orographic resolution driving the improvements associated with horizontal resolution increase in the northern hemisphere winter mid-latitudes |
publisher |
Copernicus Publications |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-535-2022 https://doaj.org/article/3c19470b1ba34a8a8de854bae4aa5b10 |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_source |
Weather and Climate Dynamics, Vol 3, Pp 535-553 (2022) |
op_relation |
https://wcd.copernicus.org/articles/3/535/2022/wcd-3-535-2022.pdf https://doaj.org/toc/2698-4016 doi:10.5194/wcd-3-535-2022 2698-4016 https://doaj.org/article/3c19470b1ba34a8a8de854bae4aa5b10 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-535-2022 |
container_title |
Weather and Climate Dynamics |
container_volume |
3 |
container_issue |
2 |
container_start_page |
535 |
op_container_end_page |
553 |
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1766131899019821056 |