TY - JOUR
T1 - The Green's Function Model Intercomparison Project (GFMIP) Protocol
AU - Bloch-Johnson, Jonah
AU - Rugenstein, Maria A.A.
AU - Alessi, Marc J.
AU - Proistosescu, Cristian
AU - Zhao, Ming
AU - Zhang, Bosong
AU - Williams, Andrew I.L.
AU - Gregory, Jonathan M.
AU - Cole, Jason
AU - Dong, Yue
AU - Duffy, Margaret L.
AU - Kang, Sarah M.
AU - Zhou, Chen
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Geophysical Union.
PY - 2024/2
Y1 - 2024/2
N2 - The atmospheric Green's function method is a technique for modeling the response of the atmosphere to changes in the spatial field of surface temperature. While early studies applied this method to changes in atmospheric circulation, it has also become an important tool to understand changes in radiative feedbacks due to evolving patterns of warming, a phenomenon called the “pattern effect.” To better study this method, this paper presents a protocol for creating atmospheric Green's functions to serve as the basis for a model intercomparison project, GFMIP. The protocol has been developed using a series of sensitivity tests performed with the HadAM3 atmosphere-only general circulation model, along with existing and new simulations from other models. Our preliminary results have uncovered nonlinearities in the response of the atmosphere to surface temperature changes, including an asymmetrical response to warming versus cooling patch perturbations, and a change in the dependence of the response on the magnitude and size of the patches. These nonlinearities suggest that the pattern effect may depend on the heterogeneity of warming as well as its location. These experiments have also revealed tradeoffs in experimental design between patch size, perturbation strength, and the length of control and patch simulations. The protocol chosen on the basis of these experiments balances scientific utility with the simulation time and setup required by the Green's function approach. Running these simulations will further our understanding of many aspects of atmospheric response, from the pattern effect and radiative feedbacks to changes in circulation, cloudiness, and precipitation.
AB - The atmospheric Green's function method is a technique for modeling the response of the atmosphere to changes in the spatial field of surface temperature. While early studies applied this method to changes in atmospheric circulation, it has also become an important tool to understand changes in radiative feedbacks due to evolving patterns of warming, a phenomenon called the “pattern effect.” To better study this method, this paper presents a protocol for creating atmospheric Green's functions to serve as the basis for a model intercomparison project, GFMIP. The protocol has been developed using a series of sensitivity tests performed with the HadAM3 atmosphere-only general circulation model, along with existing and new simulations from other models. Our preliminary results have uncovered nonlinearities in the response of the atmosphere to surface temperature changes, including an asymmetrical response to warming versus cooling patch perturbations, and a change in the dependence of the response on the magnitude and size of the patches. These nonlinearities suggest that the pattern effect may depend on the heterogeneity of warming as well as its location. These experiments have also revealed tradeoffs in experimental design between patch size, perturbation strength, and the length of control and patch simulations. The protocol chosen on the basis of these experiments balances scientific utility with the simulation time and setup required by the Green's function approach. Running these simulations will further our understanding of many aspects of atmospheric response, from the pattern effect and radiative feedbacks to changes in circulation, cloudiness, and precipitation.
KW - Green's functions
KW - MIP protocol
KW - climate sensitivity
KW - pattern effect
KW - radiative feedbacks
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U2 - 10.1029/2023MS003700
DO - 10.1029/2023MS003700
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85184207242
SN - 1942-2466
VL - 16
JO - Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
JF - Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
IS - 2
M1 - e2023MS003700
ER -