Climate change projections using the IPSL-CM5 Earth System Model: from CMIP3 to CMIP5

By J. Dufresne, M. Foujols, S. Denvil, A. Caubel, O. Marti, O. Aumont, Y. Balkanski, S. Bekki, H. Bellenger, R. Benshila and 51 more. Climate Dynamics, 2013

1,667 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the global general circulation model IPSL-CM5 developed to study the long-term response of the climate system to natural and anthropogenic forcings as part of the 5th Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). This model includes an interactive carbon cycle, a representation of tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry, and a comprehensive representation of aerosols. As it represents the principal dynamical, physical, and bio-geochemical processes relevant to the climate system, it may be referred to as an Earth System Model. However, the IPSL-CM5 model may be used in a multitude of configurations associated with different boundary conditions and with a range of complexities in terms of processes and interactions. This paper presents an overview of the different model components and explains how they were coupled and used to simulate historical climate changes over the past 150 years and different scenarios of future climate change. A single version of the IPSL-CM5 model (IPSL-CM5A-LR) was used to provide climate projections associated with different socio-economic scenarios, including the different Representative Concentration Pathways considered by CMIP5 and several scenarios from the Special Report on Emission Scenarios considered by CMIP3. Results suggest that the magnitude of global warming projections primarily depends on the socio-economic scenario considered, that there is potential for an aggressive mitigation policy to limit global warming to about two degrees, and that the behavior of some components of the climate system such as the Arctic sea ice and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation may change drastically by the end of the twenty-first century in the case of a no climate policy scenario. Although the magnitude of regional temperature and precipitation changes depends fairly linearly on the magnitude of the projected global warming (and thus on the scenario considered), the geographical pattern of these changes is strikingly similar for the different scenarios. The representation of atmospheric physical processes in the model is shown to strongly influence the simulated climate variability and both the magnitude and pattern of the projected climate changes.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cac848f272c574cd5a912abafaa1e2186a4e9461

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In Atmospheric Science

1. Sandrine Bony
2. J. Dufresne
3. J. Vial
4. I. Musat
5. David Noone
6. J. Vialard
7. Eric Guilyardi
8. A. Idelkadi

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Sandrine Bony
2. J. Dufresne
3. J. Vial
4. J. Vialard
5. David Noone
6. I. Musat
7. Eric Guilyardi
8. H. Meijl

Citations in the corpus

• Evaluation of CMIP6 DECK Experiments With CNRM‐CM6‐1 (2019, neutral): “In this model, the change in atmospheric physics parameterizations led to an improvement of the tropical climate but a worsening of midlatitude and oceanic circulations (Dufresne et al., 2013).”
• A new high‐resolution Meteorological Reanalysis Italian Dataset: MERIDA (2019, methodology): “Simulations were carried out on the European domain at 0.11◦ resolution forced by Institut Pierre Simon Laplace Climate Model 5 (IPSL-CM5) general-circulation model (GCM) (Dufresne et al., 2013).”
• How much does climate change threaten European forest tree species distributions? (2018, methodology): “We chose three GCMs: HadGEM2-ES (Jones et al., 2011), IPSLCM5A-LR (Dufresne et al., 2012), and MPI-SM-LR models (Giorgetta et al., 2013).”