Curt Covey, Krishna M. AchutaRao, Steven J. Lambert, and Karl E. Taylor
We present an overview of results from the most recent phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). This phase of CMIP has archived output from both unforced ("control run") and perturbed (1% per year increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide) simulations by 15 modern coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation models. The models are about equally divided between those employing and those not employing ad hoc flux adjustments at the ocean-atmosphere interface. The new generation of non-flux-adjusted control runs are narly as stable and agree with observations nearly as well as the flux-adjusted models. This development represents significant progress in the state of the art of climate modeling since the Second (1995) Scientific Assesment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; see Gates et al. 1996) From the increasing-CO2 runs, we find that differences between different models, while substantial, are not as great as would be expected from earlier assesments that relied on equilibrium climate sensitivity.
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UCRL-MI-123395