ALBERT

Notes: Abstract Time sclice experiments are performed with the atmospheric GCM ARPEGE, developed at Météo-France, to study the impact to increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide. This spectral model runs at T42 horizontal resolution with 30 vertical layers including a comprehensive tropospheric and stratospheric resolution and a prognostic parameterization of the ozone mixing ratio. The model is forced in a 5-year control run by climatological SSTs and sea-ice extents in order to obtain an accurate simulation of the present-day climate. Two perturbed runs are performed using SSTs and sea-ice extents for doubled CO2 concentration, obtained from transient runs performed by two coupled atmospheric-oceanic models run at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) in Hamburg and the Hadley Centre (HC). A global surface temperature warming of 1.6 K is obtained with the MPI SST anomalies and 1.9 K with the HC SST anomalies. The precipitation rate increases by 4.2% (and 4.7%). The features obtained in the stratosphere (a cooling increasing with the altitude and an increase in the ozone mixing ratio) are not sensitive to the oceanic forcing. On the contrary, the anomalies in the troposphere such as a warming increasing with altitude, an acceleration of westerly jets and a raised cloud height, depend on the oceanic forcing imposed in the two perturbed runs. Special attention is given to continental areas where the impact of the oceanic forcing is studied over eight regions around the globe. Regions sensitive to oceanic forcing such as Europe are identified in contrast with areas where the patterns are driven by land-surface physical processes, such as over continental Asia. Finally, the Köppen classification is applied to the climate simulated in the three experiments. Both doubled CO2 runs show the same predominance of global warming over precipitation changes in the Kbppen analyses.

Notes: Abstract. Time sclice experiments are performed with the atmospheric GCM ARPEGE, developed at Météo-France, to study the impact to increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide. This spectral model runs at T42 horizontal resolution with 30 vertical layers including a comprehensive tropospheric and stratospheric resolution and a prognostic parameterization of the ozone mixing ratio. The model is forced in a 5-year control run by climatological SSTs and sea-ice extents in order to obtain an accurate simulation of the present-day climate. Two perturbed runs are performed using SSTs and sea-ice extents for doubled CO2 concentration, obtained from transient runs performed by two coupled atmospheric-oceanic models run at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) in Hamburg and the Hadley Centre (HC). A global surface temperature warming of 1.6 K is obtained with the MPI SST anomalies and 1.9 K with the HC SST anomalies. The precipitation rate increases by 4.2% (and 4.7%). The features obtained in the stratosphere (a cooling increasing with the altitude and an increase in the ozone mixing ratio) are not sensitive to the oceanic forcing. On the contrary, the anomalies in the troposphere such as a warming increasing with altitude, an acceleration of westerly jets and a raised cloud height, depend on the oceanic forcing imposed in the two perturbed runs. Special attention is given to continental areas where the impact of the oceanic forcing is studied over eight regions around the globe. Regions sensitive to oceanic forcing such as Europe are identified in contrast with areas where the patterns are driven by land-surface physical processes, such as over continental Asia. Finally, the Köppen classification is applied to the climate simulated in the three experiments. Both doubled CO2 runs show the same predominance of global warming over precipitation changes in the Köppen analyses.

Notes: Abstract The climate response to an increase in carbon dioxide and sea surface temperatures is examined using the Météo-France climate model. This model has a high vertical resolution in the stratosphere and predicts the evolution of the ozone mixing ratio. This quantity is fully interactive with radiation and photochemical production and loss rates are accounted for. Results from a 5-year control run indicate a reasonable agreement with observed climatologies. A 5-year simulation is performed with a doubled CO2 concentration using, as lower boundary conditions, mean surface temperatures anomalies and sea ice limits predicted for the years 56–65 of a 100-year transient simulation performed at Hamburg with a global coupled atmosphere-ocean model. The perturbed simulation produces a global mean surface air warming of 1.4 K and an increase in global mean precipitation rate of 4%. Outside the high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, the model simulates a strong cooling in the stratosphere reaching 10 K near the stratopause. Temperature increases are noticed in the lower polar stratosphere of the Northern Hemisphere caused by an intensification in the frequency of sudden warmings in the perturbed simulation. The low and mid-latitude stratospheric cooling leads to an ozone column enhancement of about 5%. Other features present in similar studies are exhibited in the troposphere such as the stronger surface warming over polar regions of the Northern Hemisphere, the summer time soil moisture drying in mid-latitudes and the increase in high convective cloudiness in tropical regions.

Notes: Abstract. A downscaling method was developed to simulate the seasonal snow cover of the French Alps from general circulation model outputs under various scenarios. It consists of an analogue procedure, which associates a real meteorological situation to a model output. It is based on the comparison between simulated upper air fields and meteorological analyses from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. The selection uses a nearest neighbour method at a daily time-step. In a second phase, the snow cover is simulated by the snow model CROCUS at several elevations and in the different regions of the French Alps by using data from the real meteorological situations. The method is tested with real data and applied to various ARPEGE/Climat simulations: the present climate and two climate change scenarios.

Notes: Abstract. The climate response to an increase in carbon dioxide and sea surface temperatures is examined using the Météo-France climate model. This model has a high vertical resolution in the stratosphere and predicts the evolution of the ozone mixing ratio. This quantity is fully interactive with radiation and photochemical production and loss rates are accounted for. Results from a 5-year control run indicate a reasonable agreement with observed climatologies. A 5-year simulation is performed with a doubled CO2 concentration using, as lower boundary conditions, mean surface temperatures anomalies and sea ice limits predicted for the years 56–65 of a 100-year transient simulation performed at Hamburg with a global coupled atmosphere-ocean model. The perturbed simulation produces a global mean surface air warming of 1.4 K and an increase in global mean precipitation rate of 4%. Outside the high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, the model simulates a strong cooling in the stratosphere reaching 10 K near the stratopause. Temperature increases are noticed in the lower polar stratosphere of the Northern Hemisphere caused by an intensification in the frequency of sudden warmings in the perturbed simulation. The low and mid-latitude stratospheric cooling leads to an ozone column enhancement of about 5%. Other features present in similar studies are exhibited in the troposphere such as the stronger surface warming over polar regions of the Northern Hemisphere, the summer time soil moisture drying in mid-latitudes and the increase in high convective cloudiness in tropical regions.

Notes: Abstract In order to make inferences on the possible future changes of tropical cyclogenesis frequency, we apply the diagnostic computation of the Yearly Genesis Parameter (YGP) proposed by Gray (1975) to the large-scale fields simulated by a GCM. The YGP is an empirical diagnostic of the frequency of Tropical Cyclones (TCs) based on six physical parameters computed from seasonal means of atmospheric and oceanic variables. In this paper, we apply the YGP diagnostic to the results of three climate simulations performed with the atmospheric General Circulation Model (GCM) of Météo-France: ARPEGE-Climat. In a control simulation of the current climate, it is shown that the model has a realistic tropical climatology and that the computed YGP reproduces the geographical distribution of the tropical cyclogenesis frequency. The YGP is then applied to two simulations corresponding to two scenarios of doubled carbon dioxide concentration. The two experiments differ by the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) used as a lower boundary condition. In both simulations the YGP gives a large increase of total cyclogenesis frequency, but without extension of the area of possible cyclone genesis. The increase in YGP is due essentially to the contribution of the ocean thermal energy factor in the thermodynamical potential. The dynamical parameters, on the contrary, limit the cyclogenesis increase and are a major explanation of the difference between the two experiments. This is in agreement with the results of the previous similar study of Ryan et al. (1992) concerning the importance of large-scale atmospheric circulation modifications on tropical cyclone climatology. After discussing the observed relationships between ocean surface temperature and large-scale convection, and questioning the use of a fixed temperature threshold in the diagnosis of tropical cyclone frequency, we propose a modification to the YGP consisting in replacing the thermodynamical potential by a term proportional to the convective precipitation computed by the GCM. For the simulation of the present climate this modification affects only marginally the geographical distribution of tropical cyclone genesis, but for the doubled CO2 case, the modified YGP diagnoses a more limited increase in TC genesis in the Northern Hemisphere and a small reduction in the Southern Hemisphere, which seems in better agreement with other recent modelling studies with high resolution climate models (Bengtsson et al., 1996). We conclude that the modified YGP based on convective precipitation could serve as a useful diagnostic of tropical cyclone genesis, and should be tested in simulations with other GCMs.