An unprecedented set of high‐resolution earth system simulations for understanding multiscale interactions in climate variability and change

We present an unprecedented set of high-resolution climate simulations, consisting of a 500-year pre-industrial control simulation and a 250-year historical and future climate simulation from 1850 to 2100. A high-resolution configuration of the Community Earth System Model version 1.3 (CESM1.3) is used for the simulations with a nominal horizontal resolution of 0.25 degrees for the atmosphere and land models and 0.1 degrees for the ocean and sea-ice models. At these resolutions, the model permits tropical cyclones and ocean mesoscale eddies, allowing interactions between these synoptic and mesoscale phenomena with large-scale circulations. An overview of the results from these simulations is provided with a focus on model drift, mean climate, internal modes of variability, representation of the historical and future climates, and extreme events. Comparisons are made to solutions from an identical set of simulations using the standard resolution (nominal 1 degrees) CESM1.3 and to available observations for the historical period to address some key scientific questions concerning the impact and benefit of increasing model horizontal resolution in climate simulations. An emerging prominent feature of the high-resolution pre-industrial simulation is the intermittent occurrence of polynyas in the Weddell Sea and its interaction with an Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. Overall, high-resolution simulations show significant improvements in representing global mean temperature changes, seasonal cycle of sea-surface temperature and mixed layer depth, extreme events and in relationships between extreme events and climate modes.

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Author Chang, Ping
Zhang, Shaoqing
Danabasoglu, Gokhan
Yeager, Stephen G.
Fu, Haohuan
Wang, Hong
Castruccio, Frederic S.
Chen, Yuhu
Edwards, James
Fu, Dan
Jia, Yinglai
Laurindo, Lucas C.
Liu, Xue
Rosenbloom, Nan
Small, R. Justin
Xu, Gaopeng
Zeng, Yunhui
Zhang, Qiuying
Bacmeister, Julio
Bailey, David A.
Duan, Xiaohui
DuVivier, Alice K.
Li, Dapeng
Li, Yuxuan
Neale, Richard
Stössel, Achim
Wang, Li
Zhuang, Yuan
Baker, Allison
Bates, Susan
Dennis, John
Diao, Xiliang
Gan, Bolan
Gopal, Abishek
Jia, Dongning
Jing, Zhao
Ma, Xiaohui
Saravanan, R.
Strand, Warren G.
Tao, Jian
Yang, Haiyuan
Wang, Xiaoqi
Wei, Zhiqiang
Wu, Lixin
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2020-12-01T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
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Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2023-08-18T18:32:32.975423
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:23973
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Chang, Ping, Zhang, Shaoqing, Danabasoglu, Gokhan, Yeager, Stephen G., Fu, Haohuan, Wang, Hong, Castruccio, Frederic S., Chen, Yuhu, Edwards, James, Fu, Dan, Jia, Yinglai, Laurindo, Lucas C., Liu, Xue, Rosenbloom, Nan, Small, R. Justin, Xu, Gaopeng, Zeng, Yunhui, Zhang, Qiuying, Bacmeister, Julio, Bailey, David A., Duan, Xiaohui, DuVivier, Alice K., Li, Dapeng, Li, Yuxuan, Neale, Richard, Stössel, Achim, Wang, Li, Zhuang, Yuan, Baker, Allison, Bates, Susan, Dennis, John, Diao, Xiliang, Gan, Bolan, Gopal, Abishek, Jia, Dongning, Jing, Zhao, Ma, Xiaohui, Saravanan, R., Strand, Warren G., Tao, Jian, Yang, Haiyuan, Wang, Xiaoqi, Wei, Zhiqiang, Wu, Lixin. (2020). An unprecedented set of high‐resolution earth system simulations for understanding multiscale interactions in climate variability and change. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d76m3b5q. Accessed 17 June 2025.

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