Centennial Trend and Decadal-to-Interdecadal Variability of Atmospheric Angular Momentum in CMIP3 and CMIP5 Simulations

Abstract

Abstract The climatology and trend of atmospheric angular momentum from the phase 3 and the phase 5 Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3 and CMIP5, respectively) simulations are diagnosed and validated with the Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR). It is found that CMIP5 models produced a significantly smaller bias in the twentieth-century climatology of the relative MR and omega MΩ angular momentum compared to CMIP3. The CMIP5 models also produced a narrower ensemble spread of the climatology and trend of MR and MΩ. Both CMIP3 and CMIP5 simulations consistently produced a positive trend in MR and MΩ for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The trend for the twenty-first century is much greater, reflecting the role of greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing in inducing the trend. The simulated increase in MR for the twentieth century is consistent with reanalysis. Both CMIP3 and CMIP5 models produced a wide range of magnitudes of decadal and interdecadal variability of MR compared to 20CR. The ratio of the simulated standard deviation of decadal or interdecadal variability to its observed counterpart ranges from 0.5 to over 2.0 for individual models. Nevertheless, the bias is largely random and ensemble averaging brings the ratio to within 18% of the reanalysis for decadal and interdecadal variability for both CMIP3 and CMIP5. The twenty-first-century simulations from both CMIP3 and CMIP5 produced only a small trend in the amplitude of decadal or interdecadal variability, which is not statistically significant. Thus, while GHG forcing induces a significant increase in the climatological mean of angular momentum, it does not significantly affect its decadal-to-interdecadal variability in the twenty-first century.