Abstract
Accurate replication of the processes associated with the energetics of the tropical ocean is necessary if coupled GCMs are to simulate the physics of ENSO correctly, including the transfer of energy from the winds to the ocean thermocline and energy dissipation during the ENSO cycle. Here, we analyze ocean energetics in coupled GCMs in terms of two integral parameters describing net energy loss in the system using the approach recently proposed by Brown and Fedorov (J Clim 23:1563–1580, 2010a) and Fedorov (J Clim 20:1108–1117, 2007). These parameters are (1) the efficiency γ of the conversion of wind power into the buoyancy power that controls the rate of change of the available potential energy (APE) in the ocean and (2) the e-folding rate α that characterizes the damping of APE by turbulent diffusion and other processes. Estimating these two parameters for coupled models reveals potential deficiencies (and large differences) in how state-of-the-art coupled GCMs reproduce the ocean energetics as compared to ocean-only models and data assimilating models. The majority of the coupled models we analyzed show a lower efficiency (values of γ in the range of 10–50% versus 50–60% for ocean-only simulations or reanalysis) and a relatively strong energy damping (values of α−1 in the range 0.4–1 years versus 0.9–1.2 years). These differences in the model energetics appear to reflect differences in the simulated thermal structure of the tropical ocean, the structure of ocean equatorial currents, and deficiencies in the way coupled models simulate ENSO.
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Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the modeling groups, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multi-model dataset. Support of this dataset is provided by the Office of Science, US Department of Energy. We would like to thank Mat Maltrud for his tireless assistance setting up and running the POP model at Yale University. In addition, we thank Brian Dobbins for his help running and processing model data. We also thank Gurvan Madec for supply the ORCA data and advice, John Dunne for the MOM4 ocean model output, and George Philander, Lisa Goddard and Remi Tailleux for discussions of this topic. We are grateful to Mat Collins and anonymous reviewers for carefully reviewing the paper. ECMWF ERA-40 data used in this study have been obtained from the ECMWF data server, http://data.ecmwf.int/data/d/era40_mnth. The ECCO data assimilation was provided by the Consortium for Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean funded by the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP). We also thank NCAR for providing the NCEP Global Ocean Data Assimilation (GODAS) product. This research was supported in part by grants to AVF from NSF (OCE-0901921), Department of Energy Office of Science (DE-FG02-06ER64238, DE-FG02-08ER64590), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and CNRS (France) and by grants to EG from the European Community ENSEMBLES (GOCE-CT-2003-505539) under the Sixth Framework Programme and by the CNRS PICS CORDIAL project.
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Brown, J.N., Fedorov, A.V. & Guilyardi, E. How well do coupled models replicate ocean energetics relevant to ENSO?. Clim Dyn 36, 2147–2158 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-010-0926-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-010-0926-8