Evaluation of cloud and water vapor simulations in CMIP5 climate models using NASA “A-Train” satellite observationsстатья
Статья опубликована в высокорейтинговом журнале
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 25 апреля 2017 г.
Аннотация:Using NASA’s A-Train satellite measurements, we evaluate the accuracy of cloudwater content (CWC) and water vapor mixing ratio (H2O) outputs from 19 climate modelssubmitted to the Phase 5 of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), and assessimprovements relative to their counterparts for the earlier CMIP3. We find more than halfof the models show improvements from CMIP3 to CMIP5 in simulating column-integratedcloud amount, while changes in water vapor simulation are insignificant. For the 19CMIP5 models, the model spreads and their differences from the observations are larger inthe upper troposphere (UT) than in the lower or middle troposphere (L/MT). The modeledmean CWCs over tropical oceans range from 3% to 15 of the observations in theUT and 40% to 2 of the observations in the L/MT. For modeled H2Os, the mean valuesover tropical oceans range from 1% to 2 of the observations in the UT and within10% of the observations in the L/MT. The spatial distributions of clouds at 215 hPa arerelatively well-correlated with observations, noticeably better than those for the L/MTclouds. Although both water vapor and clouds are better simulated in the L/MT than in theUT, there is no apparent correlation between the model biases in clouds and water vapor.Numerical scores are used to compare different model performances in regards to spatialmean, variance and distribution of CWC and H2O over tropical oceans. Modelperformances at each pressure level are ranked according to the average of all the relevantscores for that level.