Comparison of Arctic Climate Simulations by Uncoupled and Coupled Global Models

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Abstract
Simulations of present-day Arctic climate are assessed from suites of 1) 13 global atmosphere-only models from the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP-II) and 2) 8 coupled atmosphere–ocean–ice models from the Data Distribution Center of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The assessment highlights the impact of coupling on the simulated Arctic climate, and also the improvement of the uncoupled models relative to a previous (early 1990s) phase of the AMIP project. The across-model variance of the simulated air temperature is larger in the coupled models than in the uncoupled models, and the spatial pattern of the variance indicates that differences in the coupled models' simulated sea ice contribute to the larger variance of temperature. The coupled models are also several degrees colder than the uncoupled models during the winter half of the year. As was the case with the earlier AMIP models, the simulated precipitation still exceeds the observational estimates, part... Abstract Simulations of present-day Arctic climate are assessed from suites of 1) 13 global atmosphere-only models from the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP-II) and 2) 8 coupled atmosphere–ocean–ice models from the Data Distribution Center of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The assessment highlights the impact of coupling on the simulated Arctic climate, and also the improvement of the uncoupled models relative to a previous (early 1990s) phase of the AMIP project. The across-model variance of the simulated air temperature is larger in the coupled models than in the uncoupled models, and the spatial pattern of the variance indicates that differences in the coupled models' simulated sea ice contribute to the larger variance of temperature. The coupled models are also several degrees colder than the uncoupled models during the winter half of the year. As was the case with the earlier AMIP models, the simulated precipitation still exceeds the observational estimates, part...