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The Met Office Global Coupled model 3.0 and 3.1 (GC3.0 & GC3.1) configurations

Abstract:

The Global Coupled 3 (GC3) configuration of the Met Office Unified Model is presented. Amongst other applications, GC3 is the basis of the United Kingdom's submission to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6). This paper documents the model components that make up the configuration (although the scientific description of these components are in companion papers), and details the coupling between them. The performance of GC3 is assessed in terms of mean biases and variability in long climate simulations using present-day forcing. The suitability of the configuration for predictabiity on shorter timescales (weather and seasonal forecasting) is also briefly discussed. The performance of GC3 is compared against GC2, the previous Met Office coupled model configuration, and against an older configuration (HadGEM2-AO) which was the submission to CMIP5.


In many respects, the performance of GC3 is comparable with GC2, however there is a notable improvement in the Southern Ocean warm sea surface temperature bias which has been reduced by 75%, and there are improvements in cloud amount and some aspects of tropical variability. Relative to HadGEM2-AO, many aspects of the present-day climate are improved in GC3 including tropospheric and stratospheric temperature structure, most aspects of tropical and extra-tropical variability and top-of-atmosphere & surface fluxes. A number of outstanding errors are identified including a residual asymmetric sea surface temperature bias (cool northern hemisphere, warm Southern Ocean), an overly strong global hydrological cycle and insufficient European blocking.

Publication status:
Published
Peer review status:
Peer reviewed

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Publisher copy:
10.1002/2017MS001115

Authors



Publisher:
Wiley
Journal:
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems More from this journal
Volume:
10
Issue:
2
Pages:
357-380
Publication date:
2018-02-09
Acceptance date:
2017-12-05
DOI:
EISSN:
1942-2466


Pubs id:
pubs:809654
UUID:
uuid:8f7983ef-3929-4cec-8b83-13eae6d622bc
Local pid:
pubs:809654
Source identifiers:
809654
Deposit date:
2017-12-06

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