COSP: Satellite simulation software for model assessment

By A. Bodas‐Salcedo, M. Webb, Sandrine Bony, H. Chepfer, J. Dufresne, Stephen A. Klein, Yuying Zhang, Roger Marchand, John M. Haynes, Robert Pincus and 1 more. 2011

594 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Errors in the simulation of clouds in general circulation models (GCMs) remain a long-standing issue in climate projections, as discussed in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report. This highlights the need for developing new analysis techniques to improve our knowledge of the physical processes at the root of these errors. The Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project (CFMIP) pursues this objective, and under that framework the CFMIP Observation Simulator Package (COSP) has been developed. COSP is a flexible software tool that enables the simulation of several satellite-borne active and passive sensor observations from model variables. The flexibility of COSP and a common interface for all sensors facilitates its use in any type of numerical model, from high-resolution cloud-resolving models to the coarser-resolution GCMs assessed by the IPCC, and the scales in between used in weather forecast and regional models. The diversity of model parameterization techniques makes the comparison between model and observations difficult, as some parameterized variables (e.g., cloud fraction) do not have the same meaning in all models. The approach followed in COSP permits models to be evaluated against observations and compared against each other in a more consistent manner. This permits a more detailed diagnosis of the physical processes that govern the behavior of clouds and precipitation in numerical models. The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Working Group on Coupled Modelling has recommended the use of COSP in a subset of climate experiments that will be assessed by the next IPCC report. In this article we describe COSP, present some results from its application to numerical models, and discuss future work that will expand its capabilities.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/39127ce62716cd4ab359e1db811a830abd311a6c

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Citations in the corpus

LMDZ5B: the atmospheric component of the IPSL climate model with revisited parameterizations for clouds and convection (2013, methodology): “The Calipso-GOCCP (Chepfer et al, 2010) data set is used here as it has been developed to be consistent with the Calipso-COSP simulator outputs (Chepfer et al, 2008; Bodas-Salcedo et al, 2011).”
Advanced Two-Moment Bulk Microphysics for Global Models. Part II: Global Model Solutions and Aerosol–Cloud Interactions* (2015, methodology): “Thanks to R. Neale for comments.”
Origins of differences in climate sensitivity, forcing and feedback in climate models (2013, methodology): “…CloudSat (Bodas-Salcedo et al. 2008) and CALIPSO (Chepfer et al. 2008) will be applied to the CMIP5 models as part of a programme of activities coordinated under the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project (CFMIP) using the CFMIP Observation Simulator Package (COSP, Bodas-Salcedo et al. 2011).”
The Non-hydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model: description and development (2014, methodology): “(COSP) (Bodas-Salcedo et al. 2011), and Hashino et al.”
Mixed‐phase cloud physics and Southern Ocean cloud feedback in climate models (2015, methodology): “A more precise calculation could be performed using in a manner similar toMcCoy et al. [2014b], but this necessitates histograms of simulated optical depth and height [Bodas-Salcedo et al., 2011] to describe cloud heterogeneity.”
The Transpose-AMIP II Experiment and Its Application to the Understanding of Southern Ocean Cloud Biases in Climate Models (2012, methodology): “More recently, detailed studies into the climatological structure and distribution of clouds over the Southern Ocean, and their evaluation in a particular GCM, have been carried out by Haynes et al. (2011) and Bodas-Salcedo et al.”
The ‘too few, too bright’ tropical low‐cloud problem in CMIP5 models (2012, unknown): “To make the comparison more consistent, some climate models now use COSP [ Bodas - Salcedo et al. , 2011], a community software diagnosing what different satellites would observe if they were flying above an atmosphere similar to that simulated by the models.”
An improved representation of the raindrop size distribution for single‐moment microphysics schemes (2012, methodology): “There are numerous other studies that use satellite observations to evaluate precipitation in GCMs, e.g. Bodas-Salcedo et al. (2008, 2011), that also highlight large biases in current models.”
The Met Office Global Coupled Model 3.0 and 3.1 (GC3.0 and GC3.1) Configurations (2017, methodology): “…from CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations; Chepfer et al., 2010;Winker et al., 2010) and from the models using the CFMIP (Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project) Observational Simulator Package (COSP; Bodas-Salcedo et al., 2011; Chepfer et al., 2008).”