ALBERT

Description: The pre-industrial millennium is among the periods selected by the Paleoclimate Model Intercomparison Project (PMIP) for experiments contributing to the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) and the fourth phase of the PMIP (PMIP4). The past1000 transient simulations serve to investigate the response to (mainly) natural forcing under background conditions not too different from today, and to discriminate between forced and internally generated variability on interannual to centennial timescales. This paper describes the motivation and the experimental set-ups for the PMIP4-CMIP6 past1000 simulations, and discusses the forcing agents orbital, solar, volcanic, and land use/land cover changes, and variations in greenhouse gas concentrations. The past1000 simulations covering the pre-industrial millennium from 850 Common Era (CE) to 1849 CE have to be complemented by historical simulations (1850 to 2014 CE) following the CMIP6 protocol. The external forcings for the past1000 experiments have been adapted to provide a seamless transition across these time periods. Protocols for the past1000 simulations have been divided into three tiers. A default forcing data set has been defined for the Tier 1 (the CMIP6 past1000) experiment. However, the PMIP community has maintained the flexibility to conduct coordinated sensitivity experiments to explore uncertainty in forcing reconstructions as well as parameter uncertainty in dedicated Tier 2 simulations. Additional experiments (Tier 3) are defined to foster collaborative model experiments focusing on the early instrumental period and to extend the temporal range and the scope of the simulations. This paper outlines current and future research foci and common analyses for collaborative work between the PMIP and the observational communities (reconstructions, instrumental data).

Description: The injection of sulphur into the stratosphere by explosive volcanic eruptions is the cause of significant climate variability. Based on sulphate records from a suite of ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, the eVolv2k database includes estimates of the magnitudes and approximate source latitudes of major volcanic stratospheric sulphur injection (VSSI) events from 500 BCE to 1900 CE, constituting an update of prior reconstructions and an extension of the record by 1000 years. The VSSI estimates incorporate improvements to the ice core records in terms of synchronization and dating, refinements to the methods used to estimate VSSI from ice core records, and includes first estimates of the random uncertainties in VSSI values. VSSI estimates for many of the largest eruptions, including Samalas (1257), Tambora (1815) and Laki (1783) are within 10% of prior estimates. A number of strong events are included in eVolv2k which are largely underestimated or not included in earlier VSSI reconstructions, including events in 540, 574, 682 and 1108 CE. The long term annual mean VSSI from major volcanic eruptions is estimated to be ∼ 0.5 Tg [S] yr−1, ∼ 50 % greater than a prior reconstruction, due to the identification of more events and an increase in the magnitude of many intermediate events. A long-term, latitudinally and monthly resolved stratospheric aerosol optical depth (SAOD) time series is reconstructed from the eVolv2k VSSI estimates, and the resulting global mean SAOD is found to be similar (within 33%) to a prior reconstruction for most of the largest eruptions. The long-term (500 BCE–900 CE) average global mean SAOD estimated from the eVolv2k VSSI estimates and including a constant "background" injection of stratospheric sulphur is ∼ 0.014, 30 % greater than a prior reconstruction. These new long-term reconstructions of past VSSI and SAOD variability give context to recent volcanic forcing, suggesting that the 20th century was a period of somewhat weaker than average volcanic forcing, with current best estimates of 20th century mean VSSI and SAOD values being 25 and 14 % less, respectively, than the mean of the 500 BCE to 1900 CE period. The reconstructed VSSI and SAOD data are available at https://doi.org/10.1594/WDCC/eVolv2k_v2〉.

Description: The Stratospheric Sulfur and its Role in Climate (SSiRC) interactive stratospheric aerosol model intercomparison project (ISA-MIP) explores uncertainties in the processes that connect volcanic emission of sulphur gas species and the radiative forcing associated with the resulting enhancement of the stratospheric aerosol layer. The central aim of ISA-MIP is to constrain and improve interactive stratospheric aerosol models and reduce uncertainties in the stratospheric aerosol forcing by comparing results of standardized model experiments with a range of observations. In this paper we present 4 co-ordinated inter-model experiments designed to investigate key processes which influence the formation and temporal development of stratospheric aerosol in different time periods of the observational record. The "Background" (BG) experiment will focus on microphysics and transport processes under volcanically quiescent conditions, when the stratospheric aerosol is controlled by the transport of aerosols and their precursors from the troposphere to the stratosphere. The "Transient Aerosol Record" (TAR) experiment will explore the role of small- to moderate-magnitude volcanic eruptions, anthropogenic sulphur emissions and transport processes over the period 1998–2012 and their role in the warming hiatus. Two further experiments will investigate the stratospheric sulphate aerosol evolution after major volcanic eruptions. The "Historical Eruptions SO2 Emission Assessment" (HErSEA) experiment will focus on the uncertainty in the initial emission of recent large-magnitude volcanic eruptions, while the "Pinatubo Emulation in Multiple models" (PoEMS) experiment will provide a comprehensive uncertainty analysis of the radiative forcing from the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption.

Description: The eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815 was the largest volcanic eruption of the past 500 years. The eruption had significant climatic impacts, leading to the 1816 "year without a summer", and remains a valuable event from which to understand the climatic effects of large stratospheric volcanic sulfur dioxide injections. The eruption also resulted in one of the strongest and most easily identifiable volcanic sulfate signals in polar ice cores, which are widely used to reconstruct the timing and atmospheric sulfate loading of past eruptions. As part of the Model Intercomparison Project on the climatic response to Volcanic forcing (VolMIP), five state-of-the-art global aerosol models simulated this eruption. We analyse both simulated background (no Tambora) and volcanic (with Tambora) sulfate deposition to polar regions and compare to ice core records. The models simulate overall similar patterns of background sulfate deposition, al-though there are differences in regional details and magnitude. However, the volcanic sulfate deposition varies considerably between the models with differences in timing, spatial pattern and magnitude. Mean simulated deposited sulfate on Antarctica ranges from 19 to 264 kgkm-2 and on Greenland from 31 to 194 kgkm-2, as compared to the mean ice-corederived estimates of roughly 50 kgkm-2 for both Greenland and Antarctica. The ratio of the hemispheric atmospheric sulfate aerosol burden after the eruption to the average ice sheet deposited sulfate varies between models by up to a factor of 15. Sources of this inter-model variability include differences in both the formation and the transport of sulfate aerosol. Our results suggest that deriving relationships between sulfate deposited on ice sheets and atmospheric sulfate burdens from model simulations may be associated with greater uncertainties than previously thought.

Description: Halogenated very short-lived substances (VSLSs) are naturally produced in the ocean and emitted to the atmosphere. When transported to the stratosphere, these compounds can have a significant influence on the ozone layer and climate. During a research cruise on RV Sonne in the subtropical and tropical west Indian Ocean in July and August 2014, we measured the VSLSs, methyl iodide (CH3I) and for the first time bromoform (CHBr3) and dibromomethane (CH2Br2), in surface seawater and the marine atmosphere to derive their emission strengths. Using the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART with ERA-Interim meteorological fields, we calculated the direct contribution of observed VSLS emissions to the stratospheric halogen burden during the Asian summer monsoon. Furthermore, we compare the in situ calculations with the interannual variability of transport from a larger area of the west Indian Ocean surface to the stratosphere for July 2000–2015. We found that the west Indian Ocean is a strong source for CHBr3 (910 pmol m−2 h−1), very strong source for CH2Br2 (930 pmol m−2 h−1), and an average source for CH3I (460 pmol m−2 h−1). The atmospheric transport from the tropical west Indian Ocean surface to the stratosphere experiences two main pathways. On very short timescales, especially relevant for the shortest-lived compound CH3I (3.5 days lifetime), convection above the Indian Ocean lifts oceanic air masses and VSLSs towards the tropopause. On a longer timescale, the Asian summer monsoon circulation transports oceanic VSLSs towards India and the Bay of Bengal, where they are lifted with the monsoon convection and reach stratospheric levels in the southeastern part of the Asian monsoon anticyclone. This transport pathway is more important for the longer-lived brominated compounds (17 and 150 days lifetime for CHBr3 and CH2Br2). The entrainment of CHBr3 and CH3I from the west Indian Ocean to the stratosphere during the Asian summer monsoon is lower than from previous cruises in the tropical west Pacific Ocean during boreal autumn and early winter but higher than from the tropical Atlantic during boreal summer. In contrast, the projected CH2Br2 entrainment was very high because of the high emissions during the west Indian Ocean cruise. The 16-year July time series shows highest interannual variability for the shortest-lived CH3I and lowest for the longest-lived CH2Br2. During this time period, a small increase in VSLS entrainment from the west Indian Ocean through the Asian monsoon to the stratosphere is found. Overall, this study confirms that the subtropical and tropical west Indian Ocean is an important source region of halogenated VSLSs, especially CH2Br2, to the troposphere and stratosphere during the Asian summer monsoon.

Description: The current generation of Earth system models that participate in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) does not, on average, produce a strengthened Northern Hemisphere (NH) polar vortex after large tropical volcanic eruptions as suggested by observational records. Here we investigate the impact of volcanic eruptions on the NH winter stratosphere with an ensemble of 20 model simulations of the Max Planck Institute Earth system model. We compare the dynamical impact in simulations of the very large 1815 Tambora eruption with the averaged dynamical response to the two largest eruptions of the CMIP5 historical simulations (the 1883 Krakatau and the 1991 Pinatubo eruptions). We find that for both the Tambora and the averaged Krakatau-Pinatubo eruptions the radiative perturbation only weakly affects the polar vortex directly. The position of the maximum temperature anomaly gradient is located at approximately 30°N, where we obtain significant westerly zonal wind anomalies between 10hPa and 30hPa. Under the very strong forcing of the Tambora eruption, the NH polar vortex is significantly strengthened because the subtropical westerly wind anomalies are sufficiently strong to robustly alter the propagation of planetary waves. The average response to the eruptions of Krakatau and Pinatubo reveals a slight strengthening of the polar vortex, but individual ensemble members differ substantially, indicating that internal variability plays a dominant role. For the Tambora eruption the ensemble variability of the zonal mean temperature and zonal wind anomalies during midwinter and late winter is significantly reduced compared to the volcanically unperturbed period.

Description: Climatologies of atmospheric observations are often produced by binning measurements according to latitude, and calculating zonal means. The uncertainty in these climatological means is characterized by the standard error of the mean (SEM). However, the usual estimator of the SEM, i.e. the sample standard deviation divided by the square root of the sample size, holds only for uncorrelated randomly sampled measurements. Measurements of the atmospheric state along a satellite orbit cannot always be considered as independent because (a) the time-space interval between two nearest observations is often smaller than the typical scale of variations in the atmospheric state, and (b) the regular time-space sampling pattern of a satellite instrument strongly deviates from random sampling. We have developed an experiment where global chemical fields from a chemistry climate model are sampled according to real sampling patterns of satellite-borne instruments. As case studies, sampling patterns of the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) and Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment Fourier-Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS) satellite instruments are used to iteratively subsample the model O3 fields and produce empirical estimates of the standard error of monthly mean zonal mean model O3 in 5° latitude bins. We find that generally the classic SEM estimator is a conservative estimate of the SEM, i.e. the empirical SEM is often less than the classic estimate. Exceptions occur in instances where the zonal sampling distribution shows non-uniformity with a similar zonal structure as variations in the sampled field, leading to maximum sensitivity to arbitrary phase shifts between the sample distribution and sampled field. The occurrence of such instances is thus very sensitive to slight changes in the sampling distribution, and to the variations in the measured field. This study highlights the need for caution in the interpretation of the oft-used classically computed SEM, and outlines a relatively simple methodology that can be used to assess one component of the uncertainty in monthly mean zonal mean climatologies produced from measurements from satellite-borne instruments

Description: Interest in stratospheric aerosol and its role in climate have increased over the last decade due to the observed increase in stratospheric aerosol since 2000 and the potential for changes in the sulfur cycle induced by climate change. This review provides an overview about the advances in stratospheric aerosol research since the last comprehensive assessment of stratospheric aerosol was published in 2006. A crucial development since 2006 is the substantial improvement in the agreement between in situ and space-based inferences of stratospheric aerosol properties during volcanically quiescent periods. Furthermore, new measurement systems and techniques, both in situ and space based, have been developed for measuring physical aerosol properties with greater accuracy and for characterizing aerosol composition. However, these changes induce challenges to constructing a long-term stratospheric aerosol climatology. Currently, changes in stratospheric aerosol levels less than 20% cannot be confidently quantified. The volcanic signals tend to mask any nonvolcanically driven change, making them difficult to understand. While the role of carbonyl sulfide as a substantial and relatively constant source of stratospheric sulfur has been confirmed by new observations and model simulations, large uncertainties remain with respect to the contribution from anthropogenic sulfur dioxide emissions. New evidence has been provided that stratospheric aerosol can also contain small amounts of nonsulfate matter such as black carbon and organics. Chemistry-climate models have substantially increased in quantity and sophistication. In many models the implementation of stratospheric aerosol processes is coupled to radiation and/or stratospheric chemistry modules to account for relevant feedback processes

Description: The enhancement of the stratospheric aerosol layer by volcanic eruptions induces a complex set of responses causing global and regional climate effects on a broad range of timescales. Uncertainties exist regarding the climatic response to strong volcanic forcing identified in coupled climate simulations that contributed to the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). In order to better understand the sources of these model diversities, the Model Intercomparison Project on the climatic response to Volcanic forcing (VolMIP) has defined a coordinated set of idealized volcanic perturbation experiments to be carried out in alignment with the CMIP6 protocol. VolMIP provides a common stratospheric aerosol data set for each experiment to minimize differences in the applied volcanic forcing. It defines a set of initial conditions to assess how internal climate variability contributes to determining the response. VolMIP will assess to what extent volcanically forced responses of the coupled ocean–atmosphere system are robustly simulated by state-of-the-art coupled climate models and identify the causes that limit robust simulated behavior, especially differences in the treatment of physical processes. This paper illustrates the design of the idealized volcanic perturbation experiments in the VolMIP protocol and describes the common aerosol forcing input data sets to be used.

Description: Within the SPARC Data Initiative, the first comprehensive assessment of the quality of 13 water vapor products from 11 limb-viewing satellite instruments (LIMS, SAGE II, UARS-MLS, HALOE, POAM III, SMR, SAGE III, MIPAS, SCIAMACHY, ACE-FTS, and Aura-MLS) obtained within the time period 1978-2010 has been performed. Each instrument's water vapor profile measurements were compiled into monthly zonal mean time series on a common latitude-pressure grid. These time series serve as basis for the ‘climatological’ validation approach used within the project. The evaluations include comparisons of monthly or annual zonal mean cross-sections and seasonal cycles in the tropical and extra-tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere averaged over one or more years, comparisons of inter-annual variability, and a study of the time evolution of physical features in water vapor such as the tropical tape recorder and polar vortex dehydration. Our knowledge of the atmospheric mean state in water vapor is best in the lower and middle stratosphere of the tropics and mid-latitudes, with a relative uncertainty of ±2-6% (as quantified by the standard deviation of the instruments’ multi-annual means). The uncertainty increases towards the polar regions (±10-15%), the mesosphere (±15%), and the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere below 100 hPa (±30-50%), where sampling issues add uncertainty due to large gradients and high natural variability in water vapor. The minimum found in multi-annual (1998-2008) mean water vapor in the tropical lower stratosphere is 3.5 ppmv (±14%), with slightly larger uncertainties for monthly mean values. The frequently used HALOE water vapor dataset shows consistently lower values than most other datasets throughout the atmosphere, with increasing deviations from the multi-instrument mean below 100 hPa in both the tropics and extra-tropics. The knowledge gained from these comparisons and regarding the quality of the individual datasets in different regions of the atmosphere will help to improve model-measurement comparisons (e.g. for diagnostics such as the tropical tape recorder or seasonal cycles), data merging activities, and studies of climate variability.