ALBERT

Description: This paper summarizes the results of an intercomparison project with Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs) undertaken in support of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The focus is on long-term climate projections designed to 1) quantify the climate change commitment of different radiative forcing trajectories and 2) explore the extent to which climate change is reversible on human time scales. All commitment simulations follow the four representative concentration pathways (RCPs) and their extensions to year 2300. Most EMICs simulate substantial surface air temperature and thermosteric sea level rise commitment following stabilization of the atmospheric composition at year-2300 levels. The meridional overturning circulation (MOC) is weakened temporarily and recovers to near-preindustrial values in most models for RCPs 2.6–6.0. The MOC weakening is more persistent for RCP8.5. Elimination of anthropogenic CO2 emissions after 2300 results in slowly decreasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. At year 3000 atmospheric CO2 is still at more than half its year-2300 level in all EMICs for RCPs 4.5–8.5. Surface air temperature remains constant or decreases slightly and thermosteric sea level rise continues for centuries after elimination of CO2 emissions in all EMICs. Restoration of atmospheric CO2 from RCP to preindustrial levels over 100–1000 years requires large artificial removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and does not result in the simultaneous return to preindustrial climate conditions, as surface air temperature and sea level response exhibit a substantial time lag relative to atmospheric CO2.

Description: A new model of terrestrial rock weathering – the Rock Geochemical Model (RokGeM) – was developed for incorporation into the GENIE Earth System modelling framework. In this paper we describe the model. We consider a range of previously devised parameterizations, ranging from simple dependencies on global mean temperature following Berner et al. (1983), to spatially explicit dependencies on run-off and temperature (GKWM, Bluth and Kump, 1994; GEM-CO2, Amiotte-Suchet et al., 2003) – fields provided by the energy-moisture balance atmosphere model component in GENIE. Using long-term carbon cycle perturbation experiments, we test the effects of a wide range of model parameters, including whether or not the atmosphere was "short-circuited" in the carbon cycle; the sensitivity and feedback strength of temperature and run-off on carbonate and silicate weathering; different river-routing schemes; 0-D (global average) vs. 2-D (spatially explicit) weathering schemes; and the lithology dependence of weathering. Included are details of how to run the model and visualize the results.

Description: Both historical and idealized climate model experiments are performed with a variety of Earth system models of intermediate complexity (EMICs) as part of a community contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report. Historical simulations start at 850 CE and continue through to 2005. The standard simulations include changes in forcing from solar luminosity, Earth's orbital configuration, CO2, additional greenhouse gases, land use, and sulphate and volcanic aerosols. In spite of very different modelled pre-industrial global surface air temperatures, overall 20th century trends in surface air temperature and carbon uptake are reasonably well simulated when compared to observed trends. Land carbon fluxes show much more variation between models than ocean carbon fluxes, and recent land fluxes appear to be slightly underestimated. It is possible that recent modelled climate trends or climate–carbon feedbacks are overestimated resulting in too much land carbon loss or that carbon uptake due to CO2 and/or nitrogen fertilization is underestimated. Several one thousand year long, idealized, 2 × and 4 × CO2 experiments are used to quantify standard model characteristics, including transient and equilibrium climate sensitivities, and climate–carbon feedbacks. The values from EMICs generally fall within the range given by general circulation models. Seven additional historical simulations, each including a single specified forcing, are used to assess the contributions of different climate forcings to the overall climate and carbon cycle response. The response of surface air temperature is the linear sum of the individual forcings, while the carbon cycle response shows a non-linear interaction between land-use change and CO2 forcings for some models. Finally, the preindustrial portions of the last millennium simulations are used to assess historical model carbon-climate feedbacks. Given the specified forcing, there is a tendency for the EMICs to underestimate the drop in surface air temperature and CO2 between the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age estimated from palaeoclimate reconstructions. This in turn could be a result of unforced variability within the climate system, uncertainty in the reconstructions of temperature and CO2, errors in the reconstructions of forcing used to drive the models, or the incomplete representation of certain processes within the models. Given the forcing datasets used in this study, the models calculate significant land-use emissions over the pre-industrial period. This implies that land-use emissions might need to be taken into account, when making estimates of climate–carbon feedbacks from palaeoclimate reconstructions.

Description: Sediments from the Southern Ocean reveal a meridional divide in biogeochemical cycling response to the glacial-interglacial cycles of the late Neogene. South of the present-day position of the Antarctic Polar Front in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean, biogenic opal is generally much more abundant in sediments during interglacials compared to glacials. To the north, an anti-phased relationship is observed, with maximum opal abundance instead occurring during glacials. This antagonistic response of sedimentary properties provides an important model validation target for testing hypotheses of glacial-interglacial change against, particularly for understanding the causes of the concurrent variability in atmospheric CO2. Here, I illustrate a time-dependent modelling approach to helping understand climates of the past by means of the mechanistic simulation of marine sediment core records. I find that a close match between model-predicted and observed down-core changes in sedimentary opal content can be achieved when changes in seasonal sea-ice extent are imposed, whereas the predicted sedimentary response to iron fertilization on its own is not consistent with sedimentary observations. The results of this sediment record model-data comparison supports previous inferences that the changing cryosphere is the primary driver of the striking features exhibited by the paleoceanographic record of this region.

Description: Both historical and idealized climate model experiments are performed with a variety of Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs) as part of a community contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report. Historical simulations start at 850 CE and continue through to 2005. The standard simulations include changes in forcing from solar luminosity, Earth's orbital configuration, CO2, additional greenhouse gases, land-use, and sulphate and volcanic aerosols. In spite of very different modelled pre-industrial global surface air temperatures, overall 20th century trends in surface air temperature and carbon uptake are reasonably well simulated when compared to observed trends. Land carbon fluxes show much more variation between models than ocean carbon fluxes, and recent land fluxes seem to be underestimated. It is possible that recent modelled climate trends or climate-carbon feedbacks are overestimated resulting in too much land carbon loss or that carbon uptake due to CO2 and/or nitrogen fertilization is underestimated. Several one thousand year long, idealized, 2x and 4x CO2 experiments are used to quantify standard model characteristics, including transient and equilibrium climate sensitivities, and climate-carbon feedbacks. The values from EMICs generally fall within the range given by General Circulation Models. Seven additional historical simulations, each including a single specified forcing, are used to assess the contributions of different climate forcings to the overall climate and carbon cycle response. The response of surface air temperature is the linear sum of the individual forcings, while the carbon cycle response shows considerable synergy between land-use change and CO2 forcings for some models. Finally, the preindustrial portions of the last millennium simulations are used to assess historical model carbon-climate feedbacks. Given the specified forcing, there is a tendency for the EMICs to underestimate the drop in surface air temperature and CO2 between the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age estimated from paleoclimate reconstructions. This in turn could be a result of errors in the reconstructions of volcanic and/or solar radiative forcing used to drive the models or the incomplete representation of certain processes or variability within the models. Given the datasets used in this study, the models calculate significant land-use emissions over the pre-industrial. This implies that land-use emissions might need to be taken into account, when making estimates of climate-carbon feedbacks from paleoclimate reconstructions.

Description: Paleoceanographic evidence from the Southern Ocean reveals an apparent stark meridional divide in biogeochemical dynamics associated with the glacial-interglacial cycles of the late Neogene. South of the present-day position of the Antarctic Polar Front biogenic opal is generally much more abundant in sediments during interglacials compared to glacials. To the north, an anti-phased relationship is observed, with maximum opal abundance instead occurring during glacials. This antagonistic response of sedimentary properties is an important model validation target for testing hypotheses of glacial-interglacial change, particularly with respect to understanding the causes of the variability in atmospheric CO2. Here, I illustrate a time-dependent modelling approach to helping understand past climatic change by means of the generation of synthetic sediment core records. I find a close match between model-predicted and observed down-core changes in sedimentary opal content is achieved when changes in seasonal sea-ice extent is imposed, suggesting that the cryosphere is probably the primary driver of the striking features exhibited by the paleoceanographic record of this region.

Description: We describe the design and evaluation of a large ensemble of coupled climate-carbon cycle simulations with the Earth-system model of intermediate complexity GENIE. This ensemble has been designed for application to a range of carbon cycle questions including utilizing carbon isotope (δ13C) proxy records to help constrain the state at the last glacial. Here we evaluate the ensemble by applying it to a transient experiment over the recent industrial era (1858 to 2008 AD). We employ singular vector decomposition and principal component emulation to investigate the spatial modes of ensemble-variability of oceanic dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) δ13C, considering both the spun-up pre-industrial state and the transient change due to the 13C Suess Effect. These analyses allow us to separate the natural and anthropogenic controls on the δ13CDIC distribution. We apply the same dimensionally reduced emulation techniques to consider the drivers of the spatial uncertainty in anthropogenic DIC. We show that the sources of uncertainty governing the uptake of anthropogenic δ13CDIC and DIC are quite distinct. Uncertainty in anthropogenic δ13C uptake is dominated by uncertainties in air-sea gas exchange, which explains 63% of modelled variance. This mode of variability is absent from the ensemble variability in CO2 uptake, which is rather driven by uncertainties in ocean parameters that control mixing of intermediate and surface waters. Although the need to account for air-sea gas exchange is well known, these results suggest that, to leading order, uncertainties in the 13C Suess effect and anthropogenic CO2 ocean-uptake are governed by different processes. This illustrates the difficulties in reconstructing one from the other and furthermore highlights the need for improved spatial coverage of both δ13CDIC and DIC observations to better constrain the ocean sink of anthropogenic CO2.

Description: Calcification by coral reef communities is estimated to account for half of all carbonate produced in shallow water environments and more than 25% of the total carbonate buried in marine sediments globally. Production of calcium carbonate by coral reefs is therefore an important component of the global carbon cycle. It is also threatened by future global warming and other global change pressures. Numerical models of reefal carbonate production are essential for understanding how carbonate deposition responds to environmental conditions including future atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but these models must first be evaluated in terms of their skill in recreating present day calcification rates. Here we evaluate four published model descriptions of reef carbonate production in terms of their predictive power, at both local and global scales, by comparing carbonate budget outputs with independent estimates. We also compile available global data on reef calcification to produce an observation-based dataset for the model evaluation. The four calcification models are based on functions sensitive to combinations of light availability, aragonite saturation (Ωa) and temperature and were implemented within a specifically-developed global framework, the Global Reef Accretion Model (GRAM). None of the four models correlated with independent rate estimates of whole reef calcification. The temperature-only based approach was the only model output to significantly correlate with coral-calcification rate observations. The absence of any predictive power for whole reef systems, even when consistent at the scale of individual corals, points to the overriding importance of coral cover estimates in the calculations. Our work highlights the need for an ecosystem modeling approach, accounting for population dynamics in terms of mortality and recruitment and hence coral cover, in estimating global reef carbonate budgets. In addition, validation of reef carbonate budgets is severely hampered by limited and inconsistent methodology in reef-scale observations.

Description: Southern Ocean (SO) marine primary productivity (PP) is strongly influenced by the availability of iron in surface waters, which is thought to exert a significant control upon atmospheric CO2 concentrations on glacial/interglacial timescales. The zone bordering the Antarctic Ice Sheet exhibits high PP and seasonal plankton blooms in response to light and variations in iron availability. The sources of iron stimulating elevated SO PP are in debate. Established contributors include dust, coastal sediments/upwelling, icebergs and sea ice. Subglacial meltwater exported at the ice margin is a more recent suggestion, arising from intense iron cycling beneath the ice sheet. Icebergs and subglacial meltwater may supply a large amount of bioavailable iron to the SO, estimated in this study at 0.07–1.0 Tg yr−1. Here we apply the MIT global ocean model (Follows et al., 2007) to determine the potential impact of this level of iron export from the ice sheet upon SO PP. The export of iron from the ice sheet raises modelled SO PP by up to 40%, and provides one plausible explanation for very high seasonally observed PP in the near-coastal zone. The impact on SO PP is greatest in coastal regions, which are also areas of high observed marine PP. These results suggest that the export of Antarctic runoff and icebergs may have an important impact on SO PP and should be included in future biogeochemical modelling.

Description: We assess uncertainties in projected oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2 associated with uncertainties in model ocean transport using a suite of climate/carbon-cycle models. In response to a CO2 pulse emission of 590 Pg C (corresponding to an instantaneous doubling of atmospheric CO2 from 278 to 556 ppm), the fraction of CO2 emitted absorbed by the ocean (model mean ±2σ) is 37±8%, 56±10%, and 81±4% in year 30, 100, and 1000 after the emission pulse, respectively. Modeled oceanic uptake of excess CO2 on timescales from decades to about a century is strongly correlated with simulated present-day uptake of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and anthropogenic CO2, while the amount of excess CO2 absorbed by the ocean from a century to a millennium is strongly correlated with modeled radiocarbon in the deep Southern and Pacific Ocean. The rates of surface-to-deep ocean transport are determined for individual models from the instantaneous doubling CO2 experiments, and they are used to calculate oceanic uptake of CO2 in response to emission pulses of 1000 and 5000 Pg C. These results are compared with simulated oceanic uptake of CO2 from a number of model simulations with the coupling of climate-ocean carbon cycle and without it. This comparison demonstrates that the impact of different ocean transport rate across models on the oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2 is of similar magnitude as that of climate-carbon cycle feedbacks in a single model associated with changes in temperature, circulation, and marine biology, emphasizing the importance of ocean transport in the fate of anthropogenic CO2.