Comparison of the main characteristics of the daily zonally averaged surface air temperature as represented by reanalysi
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Comparison of the main characteristics of the daily zonally averaged surface air temperature as represented by reanalysis and seven CMIP3 models Inigo Errasti & Agustín Ezcurra & Jon Sáenz & Gabriel Ibarra-Berastegi & Eduardo Zorita
Received: 31 January 2012 / Accepted: 21 January 2013 # Springer-Verlag Wien 2013
Abstract This paper analyses the ability exhibited by seven coupled global climate models of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project 3 used in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to simulate current zonally averaged surface air temperature (ZASAT) meridional profiles. The expansion in second order of ZASAT profiles by means of Legendre polynomials was compared with the same expansion carried out over the ZASAT profiles provided by the ERA40 and National Centers for Environmental Prediction reanalysis from 1961 to 1998. According to the theoretical support provided by the onedimensional energy balance models (1D-EBMs), the Legendre coefficients corresponding to the ZASAT profile can be qualitatively interpreted as the independent modes that represent the meridional energy flux from the equator to the poles. We find that three models, MIROC3.2-MR, MIROC3.2HR and MPI-ECHAM5 may be considered as the models that best reproduce the meridional structure of current ZASAT, although the differences between the models are not really large. Consequently, the results shown in this paper support the accuracy of the models in representing the poleward meridional heat fluxes and global thermal inertia under the qualitative interpretation provided by the 1D-EBM approach. I. Errasti (*) : G. Ibarra-Berastegi Department of Nuclear Engineering and Fluids Mechanics, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), 12 Nieves Cano, 01006 Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain e-mail: [email protected] A. Ezcurra : J. Sáenz Department of Applied Physics II, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain E. Zorita Institute for Coastal Research, HZG Research Centre, Geesthacht, Germany
1 Introduction During recent years, a large number of papers have contributed to the analysis and evaluation of the performance of general circulation models (GCMs). A whole chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) (Solomon et al. 2007) was devoted to the evaluation of climate models. As examples of these evaluations, readers are referred to Ahlfeld (2006), Tebaldi et al. (2006), Nieto and Rodríguez-Puebla (2006), Maxino et al. (2007) and Lucarini et al. (2007). More recently, Errasti et al. (2011) analysed the AR4 model performance for the simulation of the present-day monthly seasonal cycle of sea level pressure, surface air temperature and precipitation over the Iberian Peninsula in late twentieth century. Brown et al. (2011) evaluated the seasonal climatology and interannual variability of the South Pacific Convergence Zone in AR4 simulations of the last century. Radić and Clarke (2011) checked the model performance in simulatin
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