Atmospheric component of the MPI‐M Earth System Model: ECHAM6

By Bjorn Stevens, Marco A. Giorgetta, M. Esch, T. Mauritsen, T. Crueger, S. Rast, M. Salzmann, H. Schmidt, J. Bader, K. Block and 8 more. 2013

1,388 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ECHAM6, the sixth generation of the atmospheric general circulation model ECHAM, is described. Major changes with respect to its predecessor affect the representation of shortwave radiative transfer, the height of the model top. Minor changes have been made to model tuning and convective triggering. Several model configurations, differing in horizontal and vertical resolution, are compared. As horizontal resolution is increased beyond T63, the simulated climate improves but changes are incremental; major biases appear to be limited by the parameterization of small‐scale physical processes, such as clouds and convection. Higher vertical resolution in the middle atmosphere leads to a systematic reduction in temperature biases in the upper troposphere, and a better representation of the middle atmosphere and its modes of variability. ECHAM6 represents the present climate as well as, or better than, its predecessor. The most marked improvements are evident in the circulation of the extratropics. ECHAM6 continues to have a good representation of tropical variability. A number of biases, however, remain. These include a poor representation of low‐level clouds, systematic shifts in major precipitation features, biases in the partitioning of precipitation between land and sea (particularly in the tropics), and midlatitude jets that appear to be insufficiently poleward. The response of ECHAM6 to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases is similar to that of ECHAM5. The equilibrium climate sensitivity of the mixed‐resolution (T63L95) configuration is between 2.9 and 3.4 K and is somewhat larger for the 47 level model. Cloud feedbacks and adjustments contribute positively to warming from increasing greenhouse gases.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c86a77b2aa21f21ec6c46f2e8bd75712c8a81186

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Citations in the corpus

Developments in the MPI‐M Earth System Model version 1.2 (MPI‐ESM1.2) and Its Response to Increasing CO2 (2019, methodology): “1 were required because of inconsistent formulations in the convection scheme, in the grid-scale stratiform cloud condensation scheme, and in the turbulence transfer scheme, causing violations of the atmospheric energy budget (Stevens et al., 2013).”
ICON‐A, the Atmosphere Component of the ICON Earth System Model: I. Model Description (2018, methodology): “The parameterizations for the physical processes are adopted from ECHAM6 (Giorgetta, Roeckner, et al., 2013; Stevens et al., 2013) more specifically from ECHAM6.”
Uncertainty in Model Climate Sensitivity Traced to Representations of Cumulus Precipitation Microphysics (2016, methodology): “(1) in Mauritsen and Stevens (2015)] for parameterizing convective precipitation efficiency is used in the NCAR climate model, it produces an increase in equilibrium climate sensitivity opposite to the decrease seen in the ECHAM6 model.”
Are climate model simulations of clouds improving? An evaluation using the ISCCP simulator (2012, background): “MPI-ESM-LR Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Stevens et al. [2013] 30 P”
An investigation of weighting schemes suitable for incorporating large ensembles into multi-model ensembles (2020, background): “3 run in a T63L47 configuration (Stevens et al., 2013) as its atmospheric component for a horizontal resolution of approximately 1.8◦.”
Mixed-phase clouds cause climate model biases in Arctic wintertime temperature inversions (2014, methodology): “CMCC-CM has a less frequent cloudy state and stronger mean stability than BCCCSM-1-1 and MPI-ESM-LR, which both have stability about 1 K stronger than the reanalyses over the ocean and weaker than the reanalyses over land (Fig.”
Intercomparison of the cloud water phase among global climate models (2014, methodology): “The version of European Centre/Hamburg (ECHAM) used in this study is the sixth generation of the model developed by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, initially modifying the European Centre for MediumRangeWeather Forecasts (hence named EC) [Stevens et al., 2013].”
Simulations for CMIP6 With the AWI Climate Model AWI‐CM‐1‐1 (2020, methodology): “This feature was observed in previous ECHAM6 simulations as well (Stevens et al., 2013).”