ALBERT

Description: The Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP): overview and description of models, simulations and climate diagnostics Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2445-2502, 2012 Author(s): J.-F. Lamarque, D. T. Shindell, B. Josse, P. J. Young, I. Cionni, V. Eyring, D. Bergmann, P. Cameron-Smith, W. J. Collins, R. Doherty, S. Dalsoren, G. Faluvegi, G. Folberth, S. J. Ghan, L. W. Horowitz, Y. H. Lee, I. A. MacKenzie, T. Nagashima, V. Naik, D. Plummer, M. Righi, S. Rumbold, M. Schulz, R. B. Skeie, D. S. Stevenson, S. Strode, K. Sudo, S. Szopa, A. Voulgarakis, and G. Zeng The Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP) consists of a series of timeslice experiments targeting the long-term changes in atmospheric composition between 1850 and 2100, with the goal of documenting radiative forcing and the associated composition changes. Here we introduce the various simulations performed under ACCMIP and the associated model output. The ACCMIP models have a wide range of horizontal and vertical resolutions, vertical extent, chemistry schemes and interaction with radiation and clouds. While anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions were specified for all time slices in the ACCMIP protocol, it is found that the natural emissions lead to a significant range in emissions, mostly for ozone precursors. The analysis of selected present-day climate diagnostics (precipitation, temperature, specific humidity and zonal wind) reveals biases consistent with state-of-the-art climate models. The model-to-model comparison of changes in temperature, specific humidity and zonal wind between 1850 and 2000 and between 2000 and 2100 indicates mostly consistent results, but with outliers different enough to possibly affect their representation of climate impact on chemistry.

Description: Setup of the PMIP3 paleoclimate experiments conducted using an Earth System Model, MIROC-ESM Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2527-2569, 2012 Author(s): T. Sueyoshi, R. Ohgaito, A. Yamamoto, M. O. Chikamoto, T. Hajima, H. Okajima, M. Yoshimori, M. Abe, R. O'ishi, F. Saito, S. Watanabe, M. Kawamiya, and A. Abe-Ouchi The importance of climate model evaluation using paleoclimate simulations for better future climate projections has been recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In recent years, Earth System Models (ESMs) were developed to investigate carbon-cycle climate feedback, as well as to project the future climate. Paleoclimate events, especially those associated with the variations in atmospheric CO 2 level or land vegetation, provide suitable benchmarks to evaluate ESMs. Here we present implementations of the paleoclimate experiments proposed by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5/Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP5/PMIP3) using an Earth System Model, MIROC-ESM. In this paper, experimental settings and procedures of the mid-Holocene, the Last Glacial Maximum, and the Last Millennium experiments are explained. The first two experiments are time slice experiments and the last one is a transient experiment. The complexity of the model requires various steps to correctly configure the experiments. Several basic outputs are also shown.

Description: Aerosol-climate interactions in the Norwegian Earth System Model – NorESM Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2599-2685, 2012 Author(s): A. Kirkevåg, T. Iversen, Ø. Seland, C. Hoose, J. E. Kristjánsson, H. Struthers, A. M. L. Ekman, S. Ghan, J. Griesfeller, E. D. Nilsson, and M. Schulz The objective of this study is to document and evaluate recent changes and updates to the module for aerosols and aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions in the atmospheric module CAM4-Oslo of the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM). Particular attention is paid to the role of natural organics, sea salt, and mineral dust in determining the gross aerosol properties as well as the anthropogenic contribution to these properties and the associated direct and indirect radiative forcing. The aerosol module is extended from earlier versions that have been published, and includes life-cycling of sea-salt, mineral dust, particulate sulphate, black carbon, and primary and secondary organics. The impacts of most of the numerous changes since previous versions are thoroughly explored by sensitivity experiments. The most important changes are: modified prognostic sea salt emissions; updated treatment of precipitation scavenging and gravitational settling; inclusion of biogenic primary organics and methane sulphonic acid (MSA) from oceans; almost doubled production of land-based biogenic secondary organic aerosols (SOA); and increased ratio of organic matter to organic carbon (OM / OC) for biomass burning aerosols from 1.4 to 2.6. Compared with in-situ measurements and remotely sensed data, the new treatments of sea salt and dust aerosols give smaller biases in near surface mass concentrations and aerosol optical depth than in the earlier model version. The model biases for mass concentrations are approximately unchanged for sulphate and BC. The enhanced levels of modeled OM yield improved overall statistics, even though OM is still underestimated in Europe and over-estimated in North America. The global direct radiative forcing (DRF) at the top of the atmosphere has changed from a small positive value to −0.08 W m −2 in CAM4-Oslo. The sensitivity tests suggest that this change can be attributed to the new treatment of biomass burning aerosols and gravitational settling. Although it has not been a goal in this study, the new DRF estimate is closer both to the median model estimate from the AeroCom inter-comparison and the best estimate in IPCC AR4. Estimated DRF at the ground surface has increased by ca. 60%, to −1.89 W m −2 . We show that this can be explained by new emission data and omitted mixing of constituents between updrafts and downdrafts in convective clouds. The increased abundance of natural OM and the introduction of a cloud droplet spectral dispersion formulation are the most important contributions to a considerably decreased estimate of the indirect radiative forcing (IndRF). The IndRF is also found to be sensitive to assumptions about the coating of insoluble aerosols by sulphate and OM. The IndRF of −1.2 W m −2 , which is closer to the IPCC AR4 estimates than the previous estimate of −1.9 W m −2 , has thus been obtained without imposing unrealistic artificial lower bounds on cloud droplet number concentrations.

Description: Inclusion of Ash and SO 2 emissions from volcanic eruptions in WRF-CHEM: development and some applications Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2571-2597, 2012 Author(s): M. Stuefer, S. R. Freitas, G. Grell, P. Webley, S. Peckham, and S. A. McKeen We describe a new functionality within the Weather Research and Forecasting model with coupled Chemistry (WRF-Chem) that allows simulating emission, transport, dispersion, transformation and sedimentation of pollutants released during volcanic activities. Emissions from both an explosive eruption case and relatively calm degassing situation are considered using the most recent volcanic emission databases. A preprocessor tool provides emission fields and additional information needed to establish the initial three-dimensional cloud umbrella/vertical distribution within the transport model grid, as well as the timing and duration of an eruption. From this source condition, the transport, dispersion and sedimentation of the ash-cloud can be realistically simulated by WRF-Chem using its own dynamics, physical parameterization as well as data assimilation. Examples of model validation include a comparison of tephra fall deposits from the 1989 eruption of Mount Redoubt (Alaska), and the dispersion of ash from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland. Both model applications show good coincidence between WRF-Chem and observations.

Description: Plate kinematics in the Cantabrian domain of the Pyrenean orogen Solid Earth, 3, 265-292, 2012 Author(s): S. Tavani The Cantabrian domain represents the western portion of the Pyrenean orogen, in the area where the Iberian continental lithosphere was subducted toward the north underneath the transitional to oceanic lithosphere of the Bay of Biscay. There, the about 100 km of orogenic convergence have been mostly accommodated in the northern portion of the orogen (i.e. the retro wedge) developed in the Bay of Biscay abyssal plain, while only crustal-scale folding with limited internal deformation occurred in the Cantabrian southern wedge (pro-wedge). Integrated meso- and macrostructural analyses and a reappraisal of available information from the transitional area between the Pyrenean and Cantabrian domains are presented in this work, allowing to set geometric and kinematic constraints on the entire Meso-Cenozoic history of the northern portion of the Iberian Plate, including subduction initiation and evolution in the western portion of the Pyrenean orogen. The structural record of the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous deformation stage, which was associated with rifting and seafloor spreading in the Bay of Biscay, indicates a ridge perpendicular (NNE-SSW oriented) extension, with no evidence of relevant strike-slip components during rifting. A Cenozoic NNW-SSE oriented shortening stage followed, related to the limited (about 100 km) north-directed subduction of the Iberian continental lithosphere underneath the transitional to oceanic lithosphere of the Bay of Biscay. Subduction led to the formation of the poorly-developed Cantabrian pro-wedge, which is laterally juxtaposed to the well-developed Pyrenean pro-wedge to the east. During this convergence stage, the structural framework in the Cantabrian pro-wedge, and particularly along its transition with the Pyrenean wedge to the east, was severely complicated by the reactivation of Paleozoic and Mesozoic inherited structures. Data presented in this work fully support the development of the Cantabrian Mountains as related to indentation and consequent thickening of the Bay of Biscay transitional lower crust during north-directed subduction of Iberian continental lithosphere. In essence, the Cantabrian pro-wedge is a lithospheric south-verging fault-propagation anticline developing above the subduction plane. The structural record in the area indicates that a lithospheric fault-propagation folding stage was predated, during the very early stages of orogenic shortening, by the development of a lithospheric-scale open syncline overlying the nucleation point of lithosphere sinking. Such a syncline is today partially preserved and represents one of the few natural examples of subduction initiation.

Description: A web-based software tool to estimate unregulated daily streamflow at ungauged rivers Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2503-2526, 2012 Author(s): S. A. Archfield, P. A. Steeves, J. D. Guthrie, and K. G. Ries III Streamflow information is critical for solving any number of hydrologic problems. Often times, streamflow information is needed at locations which are ungauged and, therefore, have no observations on which to base water management decisions. Furthermore, there has been increasing need for daily streamflow time series to manage rivers for both human and ecological functions. To facilitate negotiation between human and ecological demands for water, this paper presents the first publically-available, map-based, regional software tool to interactively estimate daily streamflow time series at any user-selected ungauged river location. The map interface allows users to locate and click on a river location, which then returns estimates of daily streamflow for the location selected. For the demonstration region in the northeast United States, daily streamflow was shown to be reliably estimated by the software tool, with efficiency values computed from observed and estimated streamflows ranging from 0.69 to 0.92. The software tool provides a general framework that can be applied to other regions for which daily streamflow estimates are needed.

Description: Seismicity from February 2006 to September 2007 at the Rwenzori Mountains, East African Rift: earthquake distribution, magnitudes and source mechanisms Solid Earth, 3, 251-264, 2012 Author(s): M. Lindenfeld, G. Rümpker, A. Batte, and A. Schumann We have analysed the microseismic activity within the Rwenzori Mountains area in the western branch of the East African Rift. Seismogram recordings from a temporary array of up to 27 stations reveal approximately 800 events per month with local magnitudes ranging from –0.5 to 5.1. The earthquake distribution is highly heterogeneous. The majority of located events lie within faults zones to the east and west of the Rwenzoris with the highest seismic activity observed in the northeastern area, where the mountains are in contact with the rift shoulders. The hypocentral depth distribution exhibits a pronounced peak of seismic energy release at 15 km depth. The maximum extent of seismicity ranges from 20 to 32 km and correlates well with Moho depths that were derived from teleseismic receiver functions. We observe two general features: (i) beneath the rift shoulders, seismicity extends from the surface down to ca. 30 km depth; (ii) beneath the rift valley, seismicity is confined to depths greater than 10 km. From the observations there is no indication for a crustal root beneath the Rwenzori Mountains. The magnitude frequency distribution reveals a b -value of 1.1, which is consistent with the hypothesis that part of the seismicity is caused by magmatic processes within the crust. Fault plane solutions of 304 events were derived from P-polarities and SV/P amplitude ratios. More than 70 % of the source mechanisms exhibit pure or predominantly normal faulting. T-axis trends are highly uniform and oriented WNW–ESE, which is perpendicular to the rift axis and in good agreement with kinematic rift models. At the northernmost part of the region we observe a rotation of the T-axis trends to NEN–SWS, which may be indicative of a local perturbation of the regional stress field.

Description: Using multi-model averaging to improve the reliability of catchment scale nitrogen predictions Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2289-2310, 2012 Author(s): J.-F. Exbrayat, N. R. Viney, H.-G. Frede, and L. Breuer Hydro-biogeochemical models are used to foresee the impact of mitigation measures on water quality. Usually, scenario-based studies rely on single model applications. This is done in spite of the widely acknowledged advantage of ensemble approaches to cope with structural model uncertainty issues. As an attempt to demonstrate the reliability of such multi-model efforts in the hydro-biogeochemical context, this methodological contribution proposes an adaptation of the Reliability Ensemble Averaging (REA) philosophy to nitrogen losses predictions. A total of 4 models are used to predict the total nitrogen (TN) losses from the well-monitored Ellen Brook catchment in Western Australia. Simulations include re-predictions of current conditions and a set of straightforward management changes targeting fertilization scenarios. Results show that, in spite of good calibration metrics, one of the models provides a very different response to management changes. This behaviour leads the simple average of the ensemble members to also predict reductions in TN export that are not in agreement with the other models. However, considering the convergence of model predictions in the more sophisticated REA approach assigns more weight to previously less well calibrated models that are more in agreement with each other. This method also avoids having to disqualify any of the ensemble members, which is always sensible.

Description: Shallow water carbonate platforms (Late Aptian–Early Albian, Southern Apennines) in the context of supraregional to global changes: re-appraisal of palaeoecological events as reflectors of carbonate factory response Solid Earth, 3, 225-249, 2012 Author(s): A. Raspini This paper discusses the palaeoenvironmental significance of the "Orbitolina Level", the microbial carbonates and the Salpingoporella dinarica -rich deposits encased in the Aptian/Albian shallow water carbonate platform strata of Monte Tobenna and Monte Faito (Southern Italy). These facies show a peculiar field appearance due to their color and/or fossil content. In the shallow water carbonate strata, the Late Aptian "Orbitolina Level" was formed during a period of decreasing accommodation space. Microbial carbonates occur in different levels in the composite section. They reach their maximum thickness around the sequence boundaries just above the "Orbitolina Level" and close to the Aptian–Albian transition, and were not deposited during maximum flooding. S. dinarica -rich deposits occur in the lower part of the Monte Tobenna-Monte Faito composite section, in both restricted and more open lagoonal sediments. S. dinarica has its maximum abundance below the "Orbitolina Level" and disappears 11 m above this layer. On the basis of δ 13 C and δ 18 O values recorded at Tobenna-Faito, the succession has been correlated to global sea-level changes and to the main volcanic and climatic events during the Aptian. Deterioration of the inner lagoon environmental conditions was related to high trophic levels triggered by volcano-tectonic activity. Microbial carbonates were deposited especially in periods of third-order sea level lowering. In such a scenario, periods of increased precipitation during the Gargasian induced the mobilization of clay during flooding of the exposed platform due to high-frequency sea-level changes, with consequent terrigenous input to the lagoon. This and the high nutrient levels made the conditions unsuitable for the principle carbonate producers, and an opportunistic biota rich in orbitolinids ( Mesorbitolina texana and M. parva ) populated the platform. In the more open marine domain, the increased nutrient input enhanced the production of organic matter and locally led to the formation of black shales (e.g. the Niveau Fallot in the Vocontian Basin). It is argued that the concomitant low Mg/Ca molar ratio and high concentration of calcium in seawater could have favoured the development of the low-Mg calcite skeleton of the S. dinarica green algae. During third-order sea-level rise, no or minor microbial carbonates formed in the shallowlagoonal settings and S. dinarica disappeared. Carbonate neritic ecosystems were not influenced by the environmental changes inferred to have been induced by the mid-Cretaceous volcanism. The "Orbitolina Level", the microbial carbonates and the Salpingoporella dinarica -rich deposits in the studied Aptian/Albian shallow water carbonate strata are interpreted to be the response to environmental and oceanographic changes in shallow-water and deeper-marine ecosystems.

Description: Development of high resolution land surface parameters for the Community Land Model Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1435-1481, 2012 Author(s): Y. Ke, L. R. Leung, M. Huang, A. M. Coleman, H. Li, and M. S. Wigmosta There is a growing need for high-resolution land surface parameters as land surface models are being applied at increasingly higher spatial resolution offline as well as in regional and global models. The default land surface parameters for the most recent version of the Community Land Model (i.e. CLM 4.0) are at 0.5° or coarser resolutions, released with the model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Plant Functional Types (PFTs), vegetation properties such as Leaf Area Index (LAI), Stem Area Index (SAI), and non-vegetated land covers were developed using remotely-sensed datasets retrieved in late 1990's and the beginning of this century. In this study, we developed new land surface parameters for CLM 4.0, specifically PFTs, LAI, SAI and non-vegetated land cover composition, at 0.05° resolution globally based on the most recent MODIS land cover and improved MODIS LAI products. Compared to the current CLM 4.0 parameters, the new parameters produced a decreased coverage by bare soil and trees, but an increased coverage by shrub, grass, and cropland. The new parameters result in a decrease in global seasonal LAI, with the biggest decrease in boreal forests; however, the new parameters also show a large increase in LAI in tropical forest. Differences between the new and the current parameters are mainly caused by changes in the sources of remotely sensed data and the representation of land cover in the source data. The new high-resolution land surface parameters have been used in a coupled land-atmosphere model (WRF-CLM) applied to the western US to demonstrate their use in high-resolution modeling. Future work will include global offline CLMsimulations to examine the impacts of source data resolution and subsequent land parameter changes on simulated land surface processes.

Description: The Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature version 2.1 (MEGAN2.1): an extended and updated framework for modeling biogenic emissions Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1503-1560, 2012 Author(s): A. B. Guenther, X. Jiang, C. L. Heald, T. Sakulyanontvittaya, T. Duhl, L. K. Emmons, and X. Wang The Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature version 2.1 (MEGAN2.1) is a modeling framework for estimating fluxes of 147 biogenic compounds between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere using simple mechanistic algorithms to account for the major known processes controlling biogenic emissions. It is available as an offline code and has also been coupled into land surface models and atmospheric chemistry models. MEGAN2.1 is an update from the previous versions including MEGAN2.0 for isoprene emissions and MEGAN2.04, which estimates emissions of 138 compounds. Isoprene comprises about half of the estimated total global biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emission of 1 Pg (1000 Tg or 10 15 g). Another 10 compounds including methanol, ethanol, acetaldehyde, acetone, α-pinene, β-pinene, t −β-ocimene, limonene, ethene, and propene together contribute another 30% of the estimated emission. An additional 20 compounds (mostly terpenoids) are associated with another 17% of the total emission with the remaining 3% distributed among 125 compounds. Emissions of 41 monoterpenes and 32 sesquiterpenes together comprise about 15% and 3%, respectively, of the total global BVOC emission. Tropical trees cover about 18% of the global land surface and are estimated to be responsible for 60% of terpenoid emissions and 48% of other VOC emissions. Other trees cover about the same area but are estimated to contribute only about 10% of total emissions. The magnitude of the emissions estimated with MEGAN2.1 are within the range of estimates reported using other approaches and much of the differences between reported values can be attributed to landcover and meteorological driving variables. The offline version of MEGAN2.1 source code and driving variables is available from http://acd.ucar.edu/~guenther/MEGAN/MEGAN.htm and the version integrated into the Community Land Model version 4 (CLM4) can be downloaded from http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/ .

Description: High resolution reflection seismic profiling over the Tjellefonna fault in the Møre-Trøndelag Fault Complex, Norway Solid Earth, 3, 175-188, 2012 Author(s): E. Lundberg, C. Juhlin, and A. Nasuti The Møre-Trøndelag Fault Complex (MTFC) is one of the most prominent fault zones of Norway, both onshore and offshore. In spite of its importance, very little is known of the deeper structure of the individual fault segments comprising the fault complex. Most seismic lines have been recorded offshore or focused on deeper structures. This paper presents results from two reflection seismic profiles, located on each side of the Tingvollfjord, acquired over the Tjellefonna fault in the southeastern part of the MTFC. Possible kilometer scale vertical offsets, reflecting large scale northwest-dipping normal faulting, separating the high topography to the southeast from lower topography to the northwest have been proposed for the Tjellefonna fault or the Baeverdalen lineament. In this study, however, the Tjellefonna fault is interpreted to dip approximately 50–60° towards the southeast to depths of at least 1.3 km. Travel-time modeling of reflections associated with the fault was used to establish the geometry of the fault structure at depth, while detailed analysis of first P-wave arrivals in shot gathers, together with resistivity profiles, were used to define the near surface geometry of the fault zone. A continuation of the structure on the northeastern side of the Tingvollfjord is suggested by correlation of an in strike direction P-S converted reflection (generated by a fracture zone) seen on the reflection data from that side of the Tingvollfjord. The reflection seismic data correlate well with resistivity profiles and recently published near surface geophysical data. A highly reflective package forming a gentle antiform structure was also identified on both seismic profiles. This structure could be related to the folded amphibolite lenses seen on the surface or possibly by an important boundary within the gneissic basement rocks of the Western Gneiss Region. The fold hinge line of the structure is parallel with the Tjellefonna fault trace suggesting that the folding and faulting may have been related.

Description: A simulation study of the ensemble-based data assimilation of satellite-borne lidar aerosol observations Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1877-1947, 2012 Author(s): T. T. Sekiyama, T. Y. Tanaka, and T. Miyoshi A four-dimensional ensemble-based data assimilation system was assessed by observing system simulation experiments (OSSEs), in which the CALIPSO satellite was emulated via simulated satellite-borne lidar aerosol observations. Its performance over athree-month period was validated according to the Method for Object-based Diagnostic Evaluation (MODE), using aerosol optical thickness (AOT) distributions in East Asia as the objects of analysis. Consequently, this data assimilation system demonstrated the ability to produce better analyses of sulfate and dust aerosols in comparison to a free-running simulation model. For example, the mean centroid distance (from the truth) over a three-month collection period of aerosol plumes was improved from 2.15 grids (≈ 600 km) to 1.45 grids (≈ 400 km) for sulfate aerosols and from 2.59 grids (≈ 750 km) to 1.14 grids (≈ 330 km) for dust aerosols; the mean area ratio (to the truth) over a three-month collection period of aerosol plumes was improved from 0.49 to 0.76 for sulfate aerosols and from 0.51 to 0.72 for dust aerosols. The satellite-borne lidar data assimilation successfully improved the aerosol plume analysis and the dust emission estimation in the OSSEs. These results present great possibilities for the beneficial use of lidar data, whose distribution is vertically/temporally dense but horizontally sparse, when coupled with a four-dimensional data assimilation system. In addition, sensitivity tests were conducted, and their results indicated that the degree of freedom to control the aerosol variables was probably limited in the data assimilation because the meteorological field in the system was constrained to weather reanalysis using Newtonian relaxation. Further improvements to the aerosol analysis can be performed through the simultaneous assimilation of aerosol observations with meteorological observations. The OSSE results strongly suggest that the use of real CALIPSO data will have a beneficial effect on obtaining more accurate sulfate and dust aerosol analyses. Furthermore, the use of the same OSSE technique will allow us to perform a prior assessment of the next-generation lidar satellite EarthCARE, which will be launched in 2015.

Description: Sensitivity analysis and calibration of a soil carbon model (SoilGen2) in two contrasting loess forest soils Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1817-1849, 2012 Author(s): Y. Y. Yu, P. A. Finke, H. B. Wu, and Z. T. Guo To accurately estimate past terrestrial carbon pools is the key to understand the global carbon cycle and its relationship with the climate system. SoilGen2 is a useful tool to obtain aspects of soil properties (including carbon content) by simulating soil formation processes; thus it offers an opportunity for past soil carbon pool reconstruction. In order to apply it to various environmental conditions, parameters related to carbon cycle process in SoilGen2 are calibrated based on 6 soil pedons from two typical loess deposition regions (Belgium and China). Sensitivity analysis using Morris' method shows that decomposition rate of humus ( k HUM ), fraction of incoming plant material as leaf litter (fr ecto ) and decomposition rate of resistant plant material ( k RPM ) are 3 most sensitive parameters that would cause the greatest uncertainty in simulated change of soil organic carbon in both regions. According to the principle of minimizing the difference between simulated and measured organic carbon by comparing quality indices, the suited values of k HUM , fr ecto and k RPM in the model are deduced step by step. The difference of calibrated parameters between Belgium and China may be attributed to their different vegetation types and climate conditions. This calibrated model is improved for better simulation of carbon change in the whole pedon and has potential for future modeling of carbon cycle in paleosols.

Description: Activation of the operational ecohydrodynamic model (3-D CEMBS) – the hydrodynamic part Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1851-1875, 2012 Author(s): L. Dzierzbicka-Głowacka, J. Jakacki, M. Janecki, and A. Nowicki The paper presents a description of the hydrodynamic part of the coupled ice-ocean model that also includes ecosystem predictive model for evaluation of the condition of the marine environment and the Baltic ecosystem, as well as a preliminary empirical verification of the operational hydrodynamic model based on the POP code in order to determine the consistence between the results obtained from the model and experimental results for the sea surface temperature. The current Baltic Sea model is based on the Community Earth System Model (CESM from NCAR – National Center for Atmospheric Research). CESM was adopted for the Baltic Sea as a coupled sea-ice model. It consists of the Community Ice Code (CICE model, version 4.0) and the Parallel Ocean Program (POP, version 2.1). The models are coupled through the coupler (CPL7), which is based on the Model Coupling Toolkit (MCT) routines. The current horizontal resolution is about 2 km (1/48 degrees). The ocean model has 21 vertical levels. The driver time step is 1440 s and it is also coupling the time step. The ocean model time step is about 480 s (8 min). Currently, the model is forced by fields from the European Center for Medium Weather Forecast. In the operational mode, 48-h atmospheric forecasts are used, which are supplied by the UM model of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling of the Warsaw University. The model of the marine ecosystem is the right tool for monitoring the state and bioproductivity of the marine ecosystem and forecasting the physical and ecological changes in the studied basin.

Description: Tagged ozone mechanism for MOZART-4, CAM-chem, and other chemical transport models Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1949-1985, 2012 Author(s): L. K. Emmons, P. G. Hess, J.-F. Lamarque, and G. G. Pfister A procedure for tagging ozone produced from NO sources through updates to an existing chemical mechanism is described, and results from its implementation in the Model for Ozone and Related chemical Tracers (MOZART-4), a global chemical transport model, are presented. Artificial tracers are added to the mechanism, thus not affecting the standard chemistry. The results are linear in the troposphere, i.e., the sum of ozone from individual tagged sources equals the ozone from all sources to within 3% in zonal mean monthly averages. The stratospheric ozone contribution to the troposphere determined from the difference between total ozone and ozone from all tagged sources is significantly less than estimates using a traditional stratospheric ozone tracer (8 vs 20 ppbv at the surface). The commonly used technique of perturbing NO emissions by 20% in a region to determine its ozone contribution is compared to the tagging technique, showing that the tagged ozone is 2–4 times the ozone contribution that was deduced from perturbing emissions.

Description: Coupling technologies for Earth System Modelling Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1987-2006, 2012 Author(s): S. Valcke, V. Balaji, A. Craig, C. DeLuca, R. Dunlap, R. W. Ford, R. Jacob, J. Larson, R. O'Kuinghttons, G. D. Riley, and M. Vertenstein This paper presents a review of the software currently used in climate modelling in general and in CMIP5 in particular to couple the numerical codes representing the different components of the Earth system. The coupling technologies presented show common features, such as the ability to communicate and regrid data, but also offer different functions and implementations. Design characteristics of the different approaches are discussed as well as future challenges arising from the increasing complexity of scientific problems and computing platforms.

Description: Downscale cascades in tracer transport test cases: an intercomparison of the dynamical cores in the Community Atmosphere Model CAM5 Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1781-1816, 2012 Author(s): J. Kent, C. Jablonowski, J. P. Whitehead, and R. B. Rood The accurate modelling of cascades to unresolved scales is an important part of the tracer transport component of dynamical cores of weather and climate models. This paper aims to investigate the ability of the advection schemes in the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (CAM5) to model this cascade. In order to quantify the effects of the different advection schemes in CAM5, four two-dimensional tracer transport test cases are presented. Three of the tests stretch the tracer below the scale of coarse resolution grids to ensure the downscale cascade of tracer variance. These results are compared with a high resolution reference solution, which is simulated on a resolution fine enough to resolve the tracer during the test. The fourth test has two separate flow cells, and is designed so that any tracer in the Western Hemisphere should not pass into the Eastern Hemisphere. This is to test whether the diffusion in transport schemes, often in the form of explicit hyper-diffusion terms or implicit through monotonic limiters, contains unphysical mixing. An intercomparison of three of the dynamical cores of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Community Atmosphere Model version 5 is performed. The results show that the finite-volume (CAM-FV) and spectral element (CAM-SE) dynamical cores model the downscale cascade of tracer variance better than the semi-Lagrangian transport scheme of the Eulerian spectral transform core (CAM-EUL). Each scheme tested produces unphysical mass in the Eastern Hemisphere of the separate cells test.

Description: CLM4-BeTR, a generic biogeochemical transport and reaction module for CLM4: model development, evaluation, and application Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2705-2744, 2012 Author(s): J. Tang, W. J. Riley, C. D. Koven, and Z. M. Subin To improve regional and global biogeochemistry modeling and climate predictability, we have developed a generic reactive transport module for the land model CLM4 (called CLM4-BeTR (Biogeochemical Transport and Reactions)). CLM4-BeTR represents the transport, interactions, and biotic and abiotic transformations of an arbitrary number of tracers (aka chemical species) in an arbitrary number of phases (e.g. dissolved, gaseous, sorbed, aggregate). An operator splitting approach was employed and consistent boundary conditions were derived for each modeled sub-process. Tracer fluxes, associated with hydrological processes such as surface run-on and run-off, belowground drainage, and ice to liquid conversion were also computed consistently with the bulk water fluxes calculated by the soil physics module in CLM4. The transport code was evaluated and found be in good agreement with several analytical test cases. The model was then applied at the Harvard Forest site with a representation of depth-dependent belowground biogeochemistry. The results indicated that, at this site, (1) CLM4-BeTR was able to simulate soil-surface CO 2 effluxes and soil CO 2 profiles accurately; (2) the transient surface CO 2 effluxes calculated based on the tracer transport mechanism were in general not equal to the belowground CO 2 production rates and that their differences varied according to the seasonal cycle of soil physics and biogeochemistry; (3) losses of CO 2 through processes other than surface gas efflux were less than 1% of the overall soil respiration; and (4) the contributions of root respiration and heterotrophic respiration have distinct temporal signals in surface CO 2 effluxes and soil CO 2 concentrations. The development of CLM4-BeTR will allow detailed comparisons between ecosystem observations and predictions and insights to the modeling of terrestrial biogeochemistry.

Description: The Norwegian Earth System Model, NorESM1-M – Part 2: Climate response and scenario projections Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2933-2998, 2012 Author(s): T. Iversen, M. Bentsen, I. Bethke, J. B. Debernard, A. Kirkevåg, Ø. Seland, H. Drange, J. E. Kristjánsson, I. Medhaug, M. Sand, and I. A. Seierstad The NorESM1-M simulation results for CMIP5 ( http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/index.html ) are described and discussed. Together with the accompanying paper by Bentsen et al. (2012), this paper documents that NorESM1-M is a valuable global climate model for research and for providing complementary results to the evaluation of possible man made climate change. NorESM is based on the model CCSM4 operated at NCAR on behalf of many contributors in USA. The ocean model is replaced by a developed version of MICOM and the atmospheric model is extended with on-line calculations of aerosols, their direct effect, and their indirect effect on warm clouds. Model validation is presented in a companion paper (Bentsen et al., 2012). NorESM1-M is estimated to have equilibrium climate sensitivity slightly smaller than 2.9 K, a transient climate response just below 1.4 K, and is less sensitive than most other models. Cloud feedbacks damp the response, and a strong AMOC reduces the heat fraction available for increasing near surface temperatures, for evaporation, and for melting ice. The future projections based on RCP scenarios yield global surface air temperature increase almost one standard deviation lower than a 15-model average. Summer sea-ice is projected to decrease considerably by 2100, and completely for RCP8.5. The AMOC is projected to reduce by 12%, 15–17%, and 32% for the RCP2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 respectively. Precipitation is projected to increase in the tropics, decrease in the subtropics and in southern parts of the northern extra-tropics during summer, and otherwise increase in most of the extra-tropics. Changes in the atmospheric water cycle indicate that precipitation events over continents will become more intense and dry spells more frequent. Extra-tropical storminess in the Northern Hemisphere is projected to shift northwards. There are indications of more frequent spring and summer blocking in the Euro-Atlantic sectors and that ENSO events weaken but appear more frequent. These indications are uncertain because of biases in the model's representation of present-day conditions. There are indications that positive phase PNA and negative phase NAO become less frequent under the RCP8.5 scenario, but also this result is considered uncertain. Single-forcing experiments indicate that aerosols and greenhouse gases produce similar geographical patterns of response for near surface temperature and precipitation. These patterns tend to have opposite sign, with important exceptions for precipitation at low latitudes. The asymmetric aerosol effects between the two hemispheres leads to a southward displacement of ITCZ. Both forcing agents thus tend to reduce northern hemispheric subtropical precipitation.

Description: The Norwegian Earth System Model, NorESM1-M – Part 1: Description and basic evaluation Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2843-2931, 2012 Author(s): M. Bentsen, I. Bethke, J. B. Debernard, T. Iversen, A. Kirkevåg, Ø. Seland, H. Drange, C. Roelandt, I. A. Seierstad, C. Hoose, and J. E. Kristjánsson The core version of the Norwegian Climate Center's Earth System Model, named NorESM1-M, is presented. The NorESM-family of models are based on the Community Climate System Model version 4 (CCSM4) of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, but differs from the latter by, in particular, an isopycnic coordinate ocean model and advanced chemistry-aerosol-cloud-radiation interaction schemes. NorESM1-M has a horizontal resolution of approximately 2° for the atmosphere and land components and 1° for the ocean and ice components. NorESM is also available in a lower resolution version (NorESM1-L) and a version that includes prognostic biogeochemical cycling (NorESM1-ME). The latter two model configurations are not part of this paper. Here, a first-order assessment of the model stability, the mean model state and the internal variability based on the model experiments made available to CMIP5 are presented. Further analysis of the model performance is provided in an accompanying paper (Iversen et al., 2012), presenting the corresponding climate response and scenario projections made with NorESM1-M.

Description: Simulations of the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period using the NASA/GISS ModelE2-R Earth System Model Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2811-2842, 2012 Author(s): M. A. Chandler, L. E. Sohl, J. A. Jonas, and H. J. Dowsett Climate reconstructions of the mid-Pliocene Warm Period (mPWP) bear many similarities to aspects of future global warming as projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In particular, marine and terrestrial paleoclimate data point to high latitude temperature amplification, with associated decreases in sea ice and land ice and altered vegetation distributions that show expansion of warmer climate biomes into higher latitudes. NASA GISS climate models have been used to study the Pliocene climate since the USGS PRISM project first identified that the mid-Pliocene North Atlantic sea surface temperatures were anomalously warm. Here we present the most recent simulations of the Pliocene using the AR5/CMIP5 version of the GISS Earth System Model known as ModelE2-R. These simulations constitute the NASA contribution to the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP) Experiment 2. Many findings presented here corroborate results from other PlioMIP multi-model ensemble papers, but we also emphasize features in the ModelE2-R simulations that are unlike the ensemble means. We provide discussion of features that show considerable improvement compared with simulations from previous versions of the NASA GISS models, improvement defined here as simulation results that more closely resemble the ocean core data as well as the PRISM3D reconstructions of the mid-Pliocene climate. In some regions even qualitative agreement between model results and paleodata are an improvement over past studies, but the dramatic warming in the North Atlantic and Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian Sea in these new simulations is by far the most accurate portrayal ever of this key geographic region by the GISS climate model. Our belief is that continued development of key physical routines in the atmospheric model, along with higher resolution and recent corrections to mixing parameterizations in the ocean model, have led to an Earth System Model that will produce more accurate projections of future climate.

Description: PORT, a CESM tool for the diagnosis of radiative forcing Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2687-2704, 2012 Author(s): A. J. Conley, J.-F. Lamarque, F. Vitt, W. D. Collins, and J. Kiehl The Parallel Offline Radiative Transfer (PORT) model is a tool for diagnosing radiative forcing. It isolates the radiation code from the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM4) in the Community Earth System Model (CESM1). The computation of radiative forcing from doubling of carbon dioxide and from the change of ozone concentration from year 1850 to 2000 illustrates the use of PORT.

Description: A methodology for estimating seasonal cycles of atmospheric CO 2 resulting from terrestrial net ecosystem exchange (NEE) fluxes using the Transcom T3L2 pulse-response functions Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2789-2809, 2012 Author(s): C. D. Nevison, D. F. Baker, and K. R. Gurney We present a method for translating modeled terrestrial net ecosystem exchange (NEE) fluxes of carbon into the corresponding seasonal cycles in atmospheric CO 2 . The method is based on the pulse-response functions from the Transcom 3 Level 2 (T3L2) atmospheric tracer transport model (ATM) intercomparison. The new pulse-response method is considerably faster than a full forward ATM simulation, allowing CO 2 seasonal cycles to be computed in seconds, rather than the days or weeks required for a forward simulation. Further, the results provide an estimate of the range of transport uncertainty across 13 different ATMs associated with the translation of surface NEE fluxes into an atmospheric signal. We evaluate the method against the results of archived forward ATM simulations from T3L2. The latter are also used to estimate the uncertainties associated with oceanic and fossil fuel influences. We present a regional breakdown at selected monitoring sites of the contribution to the atmospheric CO 2 cycle from the 11 different T3L2 land regions. A test case of the pulse-response code, forced by NEE fluxes from the Community Land Model, suggests that for many terrestrial models, discrepancies between model results and observed atmospheric CO 2 cycles will be large enough to clearly transcend ATM uncertainties.

Description: Modeling atmospheric ammonia and ammonium using a backward-in-time stochastic Lagrangian air quality model (STILT-Chem v0.7) Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2745-2788, 2012 Author(s): D. Wen, J. C. Lin, L. Zhang, R. Vet, and M. D. Moran A new chemistry module of atmospheric ammonia (NH 3 ) and ammonium (NH 4 + ) was incorporated into a backward-in-time stochastic Lagrangian air quality model (STILT-Chem) that was originally developed to simulate the concentrations of a variety of gas-phase species at receptors. STILT-Chem simulates the transport of air parcels backward in time using ensembles of fictitious particles with stochastic motions, while simulating emissions, deposition and chemical transformation forward in time along trajectories identified by the backward-in-time simulations. The incorporation of the new chemistry module allows the model to simulate not only gaseous species, but also multi-phase species involving NH 3 and NH 4 + . The model was applied to simulate concentrations of NH 3 and particulate NH 4 + at six sites in the Canadian province of Ontario for a six-month period in 2006. The model-predicted concentrations of NH 3 and particulate NH 4 + were compared with observations, which show broad agreement between simulated concentrations and observations. Since the model is based on back trajectories, the influence of each major process such as emission, deposition and chemical conversion on the concentration of a modeled species at a receptor can be determined for every upstream location at each time step. This makes it possible to quantitatively investigate the upstream processes affecting receptor concentrations. The modeled results suggest that the concentrations of NH 3 at those sites were significantly and frequently affected by southwestern Ontario, northern Ohio, and nearby areas. NH 3 is mainly contributed by emission sources whereas particulate NH 4 + is mainly contributed by the gas-to-aerosol chemical conversion of NH 3 . Dry deposition is the largest removal process for both NH 3 and particulate NH 4 + . This study revealed the contrast between agricultural versus forest sites. Not only were emissions of NH 3 higher, but removal mechanisms (especially chemical loss for NH 3 and dry deposition for NH 4 + ) were less efficient for agricultural sites. This combination explains the significantly higher concentrations of NH 3 and particulate NH 4 + observed at agricultural sites.

Description: How should sparse in situ measurements be compared to continuous model data? Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 2311-2345, 2012 Author(s): L. de Mora, M. Butenschön, and J. I. Allen This work demonstrates the importance of an adequate method to sub-sample model results when comparing with in situ measurements. A test of model skill was performed by comparing a multi-decadal hindcast against a sparse, unevenly distributed historic in situ dataset. The comparison was performed using a point-to-point method. The point-to-point method masked out all hindcast cells that did not have a corresponding in situ measurement in order to compare each in situ measurement against its most similar cell from the model. The application of the point-to-point method showed that the model was successful at reproducing many inter-annual trends. Furthermore, this success was not immediately apparent using the previous comparison methods, which compared model and measurements aggregated to regional averages. Time series, data density and target diagrams were employed to illustrate the impact of switching from the previous method to the point-to-point method. The comparison based on regional averages gave significantly different and sometimes contradicting results that could lead to erroneous conclusions on the model performance. We therefore recommend that researchers take into account for the limitations of the in situ datasets, process the model to resemble the data as much as possible, and we advocate greater transparency in the publication of methodology.

Description: The chemical transport model Oslo CTM3 Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1561-1626, 2012 Author(s): O. A. Søvde, M. J. Prather, I. S. A. Isaksen, T. K. Berntsen, F. Stordal, X. Zhu, C. D. Holmes, and J. Hsu We present here the global chemical transport model Oslo CTM3, an update of the Oslo CTM2. The update comprises a faster transport scheme, an improved wet scavenging scheme for large scale rain, updated photolysis rates and a new lightning parameterization. Oslo CTM3 is better parallelized and allows for stable, large time steps for advection, enabling more complex or high resolution simulations. Thorough comparisons between the Oslo CTM3, Oslo CTM2 and measurements are performed, and in general the Oslo CTM3 is found to reproduce measurements well. Inclusion of tropospheric sulfur chemistry and nitrate aerosols in CTM3 is shown to be important to reproduce tropospheric O 3 , OH and the CH 4 lifetime well. Using the same meteorology to drive the two models, shows that some features related to transport are better resolved by the CTM3, such as polar cap transport, while features like transport close to the vortex edge are resolved better in the Oslo CTM2 due to its required shorter transport time step. The longer transport time steps in CTM3 result in larger errors e.g. near the jets, and when necessary, this can be remedied by using a shorter time step. An additional, more accurate and time consuming, treatment of polar cap transport is presented, however, both perform acceptably. A new treatment of the horizontal distribution of lightning is presented and found to compare well with measurements. Vertical distributions of lighting are updated, and tested against the old vertical distribution. The new profiles are found to produce more NO x in the tropical middle troposphere, and less at the surface and at high altitudes.

Description: Corrigendum to "Floating stones off El Hierro, Canary Islands: xenoliths of pre-island sedimentary origin in the early products of the October 2011 eruption" published in Solid Earth, 3, 97–110, 2012 Solid Earth, 3, 189-189, 2012 Author(s): V. R. Troll, A. Klügel, M.-A. Longpré, S. Burchardt, F. M. Deegan, J. C. Carracedo, S. Wiesmaier, U. Kueppers, B. Dahren, L. S. Blythe, T. H. Hansteen, C. Freda, D. A. Budd, E. M. Jolis, E. Jonsson, F. C. Meade, C. Harris, S. E. Berg, L. Mancini, M. Polacci, and K. Pedroza No abstract available.

Description: Unified parameterization of the planetary boundary layer and shallow convection with a higher-order turbulence closure in the community atmosphere model: single column experiments Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1743-1780, 2012 Author(s): P. A. Bogenschutz, A. Gettelman, H. Morrison, V. E. Larson, D. P. Schanen, N. R. Meyer, and C. Craig This paper describes the coupling of the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) version 5 with a unified multi-variate probability density function (PDF) parameterization, Cloud Layers Unified by Binormals (CLUBB). CLUBB replaces the planetary boundary layer (PBL), shallow convection, and cloud macrophysics schemes in CAM5 with a higher-order turbulence closure based on an assumed PDF. Comparisons of single-column versions of CAM5 and CAM-CLUBB are provided in this paper for several boundary layer regimes. As compared to Large Eddy Simulations (LES), CAM-CLUBB and CAM5 simulate marine stratocumulus regimes with similar accuracy. For shallow convective regimes, CAM-CLUBB improves the representation of cloud cover and liquid water path (LWP). In addition, for shallow convection CAM-CLUBB offers better fidelity for sub-grid scale vertical velocity, which is an important input for aerosol activation. Finally, CAM-CLUBB results are more robust to changes in vertical and temporal resolution when compared to CAM5.

Description: Implementation of the chemistry module MECCA (v2.5) in the modal aerosol version of the Community Atmosphere Model component (v3.6.33) of the Community Earth System Model Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1483-1501, 2012 Author(s): M. S. Long, W. C. Keene, R. Easter, R. Sander, A. Kerkweg, D. Erickson, X. Liu, and S. Ghan A coupled atmospheric chemistry and climate system model was developed using the modal aerosol version of the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Atmosphere Model (modal-CAM) and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry's Module Efficiently Calculating the Chemistry of the Atmosphere (MECCA) to provide enhanced resolution of multiphase processes, particularly those involving inorganic halogens, and associated impacts on atmospheric composition and climate. Three Rosenbrock solvers (Ros-2, Ros-3, RODAS-3) were tested in conjunction with the basic load balancing options available to modal CAM (1) to establish an optimal configuration of the implicitly-solved multiphase chemistry module that maximizes both computational speed and repeatability of Ros-2 and RODAS-3 results versus Ros-3, and (2) to identify potential implementation strategies for future versions of this and similar coupled systems. RODAS-3 was faster than Ros-2 and Ros-3 with good reproduction of Ros-3 results, while Ros-2 was both slower and substantially less reproducible relative to Ros-3 results. Modal-CAM with MECCA chemistry was a factor of 15 slower than modal-CAM using standard chemistry. MECCA chemistry integration times demonstrated a systematic frequency distribution for all three solvers, and revealed that the change in run-time performance was due to a change in the frequency distribution chemical integration times; the peak frequency was similar for all solvers. This suggests that efficient chemistry-focused load-balancing schemes can be developed that rely on the parameters of this frequency distribution.

Description: Describing Earth System Simulations with the Metafor CIM Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1669-1689, 2012 Author(s): B. N. Lawrence, V. Balaji, P. Bentley, S. Callaghan, C. DeLuca, S. Denvil, G. Devine, M. Elkington, R. W. Ford, E. Guilyardi, M. Lautenschlager, M. Morgan, M.-P. Moine, S. Murphy, C. Pascoe, H. Ramthun, P. Slavin, L. Steenman-Clark, F. Toussaint, A. Treshansky, and S. Valcke The Metafor project has developed a Common Information Model (CIM) using the ISO1900 series formalism to describe the sorts of numerical experiments carried out by the earth system modelling community, the models they use, and the simulations that result. Here we describe the mechanism by which the CIM was developed, and its key properties. We introduce the conceptual and application versions and the controlled vocabularies developed in the context of supporting the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We describe how the CIM has been used in experiments to describe model coupling properties and describe the near term expected evolution of the CIM.

Description: Lidar signal simulation for the evaluation of aerosols in chemistry-transport models Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1691-1741, 2012 Author(s): S. Stromatas, S. Turquety, L. Menut, H. Chepfer, J. C. Péré, G. Cesana, and B. Bessagnet We present an adaptable tool, the OPTSIM (OPTical properties SIMulation) software, for the simulation of optical properties and lidar attenuated backscattered profiles (β ' ) from aerosol concentrations calculated by chemistry-transport models (CTM). It was developed to support model evaluation using an original approach based on the lidar Level 1 observations (β ' ), avoiding the use of Level 2 aerosol retrievals which include specific assumptions on aerosol types that may not be in agreement with the CTM. In addition to an evaluation of the aerosol loading and optical properties, active remote sensing allows the analysis of aerosols' vertical structures. An academic case study for two different species (black carbon and dust) is presented and shows the consistency of the simulator. Illustrations are then given through the analysis of dust events in the Mediterranean region during the summer 2007. These are based on simulations by the CHIMERE regional CTM and observations from the CALIOP space-based lidar, and highlight the potential of this approach to evaluate the concentration, size and vertical structure of the aerosol plumes.

Description: Better constraints on the sea-ice state using global sea-ice data assimilation Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1627-1667, 2012 Author(s): P. Mathiot, C. König Beatty, T. Fichefet, H. Goosse, F. Massonnet, and M. Vancoppenolle Short-term and decadal sea-ice prediction systems need a realistic initial state, generally obtained using ice-ocean model simulations with data assimilation. However, only sea-ice concentration and velocity data are currently assimilated. In this work, an Ensemble Kalman Filter system is used to assimilate observed ice concentration and freeboard (i.e. thickness of emerged sea ice) data into a global coupled ocean–sea-ice model. The impact and effectiveness of our data assimilation system is assessed in two steps: firstly, through the assimilation of synthetic data (i.e., model-generated data) and, secondly, through the assimilation of satellite data. While ice concentrations are available daily, freeboard data used in this study are only available during six one-month periods spread over 2005–2007. Our results show that the simulated Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice extents are improved by the assimilation of synthetic ice concentration data. Assimilation of synthetic ice freeboard data improves the simulated sea-ice thickness field. Using real ice concentration data enhances the model realism in both hemispheres. Assimilation of ice concentration data significantly improves the total hemispheric sea-ice extent all year long, especially in summer. Combining the assimilation of ice freeboard and concentration data leads to better ice thickness, but does not further improve the ice extent. Moreover, the improvements in sea-ice thickness due to the assimilation of ice freeboard remain visible well beyond the assimilation periods.

Description: Modeling wet deposition of inorganics over Northeast Asia with MRI-PM/c and the effects of super large sea salt droplets at near-the-coast stations Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1341-1379, 2012 Author(s): M. Kajino, M. Deushi, T. Maki, N. Oshima, Y. Inomata, K. Sato, T. Ohizumi, and H. Ueda We conducted a regional-scale simulation (with grid spacing = 60 km) over Northeast Asia for the entire year of 2006 by using an aerosol chemical transport model, the lateral and upper boundary concentrations of which we predicted with a global stratospheric and tropospheric chemistry-climate model, with a horizontal resolution of T42 (grid spacing ~300 km) and a time resolution of 1 h. The present one-way nested global-through-regional-scale model is called the Meteorological Research Institute – Passive-tracers Model system for atmospheric Chemistry (MRI-PM/c). We evaluated the model performance with respect to the major inorganic components in rain and snow measured by stations of the Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia (EANET). Through statistical analysis, we show that the model successfully reproduced the regional-scale processes of emission, transport, transformation, and wet deposition of major inorganic species derived from anthropogenic and natural sources, including SO 4 2− , NH 4 + , NO 3 − , Na + and Ca 2+ . Interestingly, the only exception was Na + in precipitation at near-coastal stations (where the distance from the coast was from 150 to 700 m), concentrations of which were significantly underestimated by the model, by up to a factor of 30. This result suggested that the contribution of short-lived, super-large sea salt droplets (SLSD; D 〉 10–100 μm) was substantial in precipitation samples at stations near the coast of Japan; thus samples were horizontally representative only within the traveling distances of SLSD (from 1 to 10 km). Nevertheless, the calculated effect of SLSD on precipitation pH was very low, a change of about +0.014 on average, even if the ratio of SLSD to all sea salt in precipitation was assumed to be 90%.

Description: New developments in the analysis of column-collapse pyroclastic density currents through numerical simulations of multiphase flows Solid Earth, 3, 161-173, 2012 Author(s): S. Lepore and C. Scarpati A granular multiphase model has been used to evaluate the action of differently sized particles on the dynamics of fountains and associated pyroclastic density currents. The model takes into account the overall disequilibrium conditions between a gas phase and several solid phases, each characterized by its own physical properties. The dynamics of the granular flows (fountains and pyroclastic density currents) has been simulated by adopting a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes model for describing the turbulence effects. Numerical simulations have been carried out by using different values for the eruptive column temperature at the vent, solid particle frictional concentration, turbulent kinetic energy, and dissipation. The results obtained provide evidence of the multiphase nature of the model and describe several disequilibrium effects. The low concentration (≤5 × 10 −4 ) zones lie in the upper part of the granular flow, above the fountain, and above the tail and body of pyroclastic density current as thermal plumes. The high concentration zones, on the contrary, lie in the fountain and at the base of the current. Hence, pyroclastic density currents are assimilated to granular flows constituted by a low concentration suspension flowing above a high concentration basal layer (boundary layer), from the proximal regions to the distal ones. Interactions among the solid particles in the boundary layer of the granular flow are controlled by collisions between particles, whereas the dispersal of particles in the suspension is determined by the dragging of the gas phase. The simulations describe well the dynamics of a tractive boundary layer leading to the formation of stratified facies during Strombolian to Plinian eruptions.

Description: Mid-Pliocene climate modelled using the UK Hadley Centre Model: PlioMIP Experiments 1 and 2 Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 837-871, 2012 Author(s): F. J. Bragg, D. J. Lunt, and A. M. Haywood The Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP) project is a sub-project of the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP) whose objective is to compare predictions of the mid-Pliocene climate from the widest possible range of general circulation models. The mid-Pliocene (3.3–3.0 Ma) is the most recent sustained period of greater warmth and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration than the pre-industrial times and as such has potential to inform predictions of our warming climate in the coming century. This paper describes the UK contribution to PlioMIP using the Hadley Centre Model both in atmosphere-only mode (HadAM3, PlioMIP Experiment 1) and atmosphere-ocean coupled mode (HadCM3, PlioMIP Experiment 2). The coupled model predicts a greater overall warming (3.3 °C) relative to the control than the atmosphere-only (2.5 °C). The Northern Hemisphere latitudinal temperature gradient is greater in the coupled model with a warmer equator and colder Arctic than the atmosphere-only model, which is constrained by sea surface temperatures from Pliocene proxy reconstructions. The atmosphere-only model predicts a reduction in equatorial precipitation and south Asian monsoon intensity whereas the coupled models shows and increase in the intensity of these systems. Sensitivity studies using alternative boundary conditions for both the Pliocene and the control simulations are presented, which indicate the sensitivity of the mid-Pliocene warming to uncertainties in both pre-industrial and mid-Pliocene climate.

Description: The fate of fluids released from subducting slab in northern Cascadia Solid Earth, 3, 121-129, 2012 Author(s): K. Ramachandran and R. D. Hyndman Large amounts of water carried down in subduction zones are driven upward into the overlying forearc upper mantle and crust as increasing temperatures and pressure dehydrate the subducting crust. Through seismic tomography velocities we show (a) the overlying forearc mantle in northern Cascadia is hydrated to serpentinite, and (b) there is low Poisson's ratio at the base of the forearc lower crust that may represent silica deposited from the rising fluids. From the velocities observed in the forearc mantle, the volume of serpentinite estimated is ∼30 %. This mechanically weak hydrated forearc region has important consequences in limits to great earthquakes and to collision tectonics. An approximately 10 km thick lower crustal layer of low Poisson's ratio (σ = 0.22) in the forearc is estimated to represent a maximum addition of ∼14 % by volume of quartz (σ = 0.09). If this quartz is removed from rising silica-saturated fluids over long times, it represents a significant addition of silica to the continental crust and an important contributor to its average composition.

Description: Performance of McRAS-AC in the GEOS-5 AGCM: aerosol-cloud-microphysics, precipitation, cloud radiative effects, and circulation Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1381-1434, 2012 Author(s): Y. C. Sud, D. Lee, L. Oreopoulos, D. Barahona, A. Nenes, and M. J. Suarez A revised version of the Microphysics of clouds with Relaxed Arakawa-Schubert and Aerosol-Cloud interaction scheme (McRAS-AC) including, among others, the Barahona and Nenes ice nucleation parameterization, is implemented in the GEOS-5 AGCM. Various fields from a 10-yr long integration of the AGCM with McRAS-AC were compared with their counterparts from an integration of the baseline GEOS-5 AGCM using satellite data as observations. Generally McRAS-AC simulations have smaller biases in cloud fields and cloud radiative effects over most of the regions of the Earth than the baseline GEOS-5 AGCM. Two systematic biases are identified in the McRAS-AC runs: one under-prediction of cloud particles around 40° S–60° S, and one over-prediction of cloud water path during Northern Hemisphere summer over the Gulf Stream and North Pacific. Sensitivity analyses show that these biases potentially originate from biases in the aerosol input. The first bias is largely eliminated in a sensitivity test using 50% smaller sea-salt aerosol particles, while the second bias is much reduced when interactive aerosol chemistry was turned on. The main drawback of McRAS-AC is dearth of low-level marine stratus clouds, probably due to lack of boundary-layer clouds that is an outcome of explicit dry-convection not yet implemented into the cloud model. Nevertheless, McRAS-AC simulates realistic clouds and their optical properties that can further improve with better aerosol-input. Thereby, McRAS-AC has the potential to be a valuable tool for climate modeling research because of its superior simulation capabilities that physically couple aerosols, cloud microphysics, cloud macrophysics, and cloud-radiation interaction for all clouds.

Description: Modelling mid-Pliocene climate with COSMOS Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 917-966, 2012 Author(s): C. Stepanek and G. Lohmann In this manuscript we describe the experimental procedure employed at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany in the preparation of the simulations for the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP). We present a description of the utilized community earth system models (COSMOS) and document the procedures which we applied to transfer the Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping Project (PRISM) mid-Pliocene reconstruction into model forcing fields. The model setup and spin-up procedure are described for both the paleo and preindustrial (PI) time-slices of PlioMIP experiments 1 and 2, and general results that depict the performance of our model setup for mid-Pliocene conditions are presented. The mid-Pliocene as simulated with our COSMOS-setup and PRISM boundary conditions is both warmer and wetter than the PI. The globally averaged annual mean surface air temperature in the mid-Pliocene standalone atmosphere (fully coupled atmosphere-ocean) simulation is 17.35 °C (17.82 °C), which implies a warming of 2.23 °C (3.40 °C) relative to the respective PI control simulation.

Description: TopoSUB: a tool for efficient large area numerical modelling in complex topography at sub-grid scales Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1041-1076, 2012 Author(s): J. Fiddes and S. Gruber Mountain regions are highly sensitive to global climate change. However, large scale assessments of mountain environments remain problematic due to the high resolution required of model grids to capture strong lateral variability. To alleviate this, tools are required to bridge the scale gap between gridded climate datasets (climate models and re-analyses) and unresolved (by coarse grids) sub-grid mountain topography. We address this problem with a sub-grid method. It relies on sampling the most important aspects of land surface heterogeneity through a lumped scheme, allowing for the application of numerical land surface models (LSM) over large areas in mountain regions. This is achieved by including the effect of mountain topography on these processes at the sub-grid scale using a multidimensional informed sampling procedure together with a 1-D lumped model that can be driven by gridded climate datasets. This paper provides a description of this sub-grid scheme, TopoSUB, as well as assessing its performance against a distributed model. We demonstrate the ability of TopoSUB to approximate results simulated by a distributed numerical LSM at around 10 4 less computations. These significant gains in computing resources allow for: (1) numerical modelling of processes at fine grid resolutions over large areas; (2) extremely efficient statistical descriptions of sub-grid behaviour; (3) a "sub-grid aware" aggregation of simulated variables to course grids; and (4) freeing of resources for treatment of uncertainty in the modelling process.

Description: Impact of a time-dependent background error covariance matrix on air quality analysis Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 873-916, 2012 Author(s): E. Jaumouillé, S. Massart, A. Piacentini, D. Cariolle, and V.-H. Peuch In this article we study the influence of different characteristics of our assimilation system on the surface ozone analyses over Europe. Emphasis is placed on the evaluation of the background error covariance matrix (BECM). Data assimilation systems require a BECM in order to obtain an optimal representation of the physical state. A posteriori diagnostics are an efficient way to check the consistency of the used BECM. In this study we derived a diagnostic to estimate the BECM. On the other hand an increasingly used approach to obtain such a covariance matrix is to estimate it from an ensemble of perturbed assimilation experiments. We applied this method, combined with variational assimilation, while analysing the surface ozone distribution over Europe. We first show that the resulting covariance matrix is strongly time (hourly and seasonally) and space dependent. We then built several configurations of the background error covariance matrix with none, one or two of its components derived from the ensemble estimation. We used each of these configurations to produce surface ozone analyses. All the analyses are compared between themselves and compared to assimilated data or data from independent validation stations. The configurations are very well correlated with the validation stations, but with varying regional and seasonal characteristics. The largest correlation is obtained with the experiments using time and space dependent correlation of the background errors. Results show that our assimilation process is efficient in bringing the model assimilations closer to the observations than the direct simulation, but we cannot conclude which BECM configuration is the best. The impact of the background error covariances configuration on four-days forecasts is also studied. Although mostly positive, the impact depends on the season and lasts longer during the winter season.

Description: Numerical uncertainty at mesoscale in a Lagrangian model in complex terrain Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 967-991, 2012 Author(s): J. Brioude, W. M. Angevine, S. A. McKeen, and E.-Y. Hsie Recently, it has been shown that mass conservation in Lagrangian models is improved by using time-average winds out of Eulerian models. In this study, we evaluate the mass conservation and trajectory uncertainties in complex terrain at mesoscale using the FLEXPART Lagrangian particle dispersion model coupled with the WRF mesoscale model. The specific form of vertical wind used is found to have a large effect. Time average wind with time average sigma dot (σ · ), instantaneous wind with geometric cartesian vertical wind ( w ) and instantaneous wind with σ · are used to simulate mixing ratios of a passive tracer in forward and backward runs using different time interval outputs and horizontal resolutions in California. Mass conservation in the FLEXPART model was not an issue when using time-average wind or instantaneous wind with σ · . However, mass was poorly conserved using instantaneous wind with w , with a typical variation of 25% within 24 h. Uncertainties in surface residence time (a backtrajectory product commonly used in source receptor studies or inverse modeling) calculated for each backtrajectory run were also analyzed. The smallest uncertainties were systematically found when using time-average wind. Uncertainties using instantaneous wind with σ · were slightly larger, as long as the time interval of output was sufficiently small. The largest uncertainties were found when using instantaneous wind with w . Those uncertainties were found to be linearly correlated with the local average gradient of orography. Differences in uncertainty were much smaller when trajectories were calculated over flat terrain. For a typical run at mesoscale in complex terrain, 4 km horizontal resolution and 1 h time interval output, the average uncertainty and bias in surface residence time is, respectively 8.4% and −2.5% using time-average wind, and 13% and −3.7% using instantaneous wind with σ · in complex terrain. The corresponding values for instantaneous wind with cartesian w were 24% and −11%. While the use of time-average wind systematically improves uncertainty in FLEXPART, the improvements are small, and therfore a systematic use of time-average wind in Lagrangian models is not necessarily required. Use of cartesian vertical wind in complex terrain, however, should be avoided.

Description: Models of soil organic matter decomposition: the SOILR package, version 1.0 Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 993-1039, 2012 Author(s): C. A. Sierra, M. Müller, and S. E. Trumbore Organic matter decomposition is a very important process within the Earth System because it controls the rates of mineralization of carbon and other biogeochemical elements, determining their flux to the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. SOILR is a modeling framework that contains a library of functions and tools for modeling soil organic matter decomposition under the R environment for computing. It implements a variety of model structures and tools to represent carbon storage and release from soil organic matter. In SOILR organic matter decomposition is represented as a linear system of ordinary differential equations that generalizes the structure of most compartment-based decomposition models. A variety of functions is also available to represent environmental effects on decomposition rates. This document presents the conceptual basis for the functions implemented in the package. It is complementary to the help pages released with the software.

Description: A semi-analytical solution to accelerate spin-up of a coupled carbon and nitrogen land model to steady state Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 803-836, 2012 Author(s): J. Xia, Y. Luo, Y.-P. Wang, E. Weng, and O. Hararuk The spin-up of land models to steady state of coupled carbon-nitrogen processes is computationally so costly that it becomes a~bottleneck issue for global analysis. In this study, we introduced a semi-analytical solution (SAS) for the spin-up issue. SAS is fundamentally based on the analytic solution to a set of equations that describe carbon transfers within ecosystems over time. SAS is implemented by three steps: (1) having an initial spin-up with prior pool-size values until net primary productivity (NPP) reaches steady state, (2) calculating quasi steady-state pool sizes by letting fluxes of the equations equal zero, and (3) having a final spin-up to meet the criterion of steady state. Step 2 is enabled by averaged time-varying variables over one period of repeated driving forcings. SAS was applied to both site-level and global scale spin-up of the Australian Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange (CABLE) model. For the carbon-cycle-only simulations, SAS saved 95.7% and 92.4% of computational time for site-level and global spin-up, respectively, in comparison with the traditional method. For the carbon-nitrogen-coupled simulations, SAS reduced computational cost by 84.5% and 86.6% for site-level and global spin-up, respectively. The estimated steady-state pool sizes represent the ecosystem carbon storage capacity, which was 12.1 kg C m −2 with the coupled carbon-nitrogen global model, 14.6% lower than that with the carbon-only model. The nitrogen down-regulation in modeled carbon storage is partly due to the 4.6% decrease in carbon influx (i.e., net primary productivity) and partly due to the 10.5% reduction in residence times. This steady-state analysis accelerated by the SAS method can facilitate comparative studies of structural differences in determining the ecosystem carbon storage capacity among biogeochemical models. Overall, the computational efficiency of SAS potentially permits many global analyses that are impossible with the traditional spin-up methods, such as ensemble analysis of land models against parameter variations.

Description: A community diagnostic tool for Chemistry Climate Model Validation Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1229-1261, 2012 Author(s): A. Gettelman, V. Eyring, C. Fischer, H. Shiona, I. Cionni, M. Neish, O. Morgenstern, S. W. Wood, and Z. Li This technical note presents an overview of the Chemistry-Climate Model Validation Diagnostic (CCMVal-Diag) tool for model evaluation. The CCMVal-Diag tool is a flexible and extensible open source package that facilitates the complex evaluation of global models. Models can be compared to other models, ensemble members (simulations with the same model), and/or many types of observations. The tool can also compute quantitative performance metrics. The initial construction and application is to coupled Chemistry-Climate Models (CCMs) participating in CCMVal, but the evaluation of climate models that submitted output to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) is also possible. The package has been used to assist with analysis of simulations for the 2010 WMO/UNEP Scientific Ozone Assessment and the SPARC Report on the Evaluation of CCMs. The CCMVal-Diag tool is described and examples of how it functions are presented, along with links to detailed descriptions, instructions and source code. The CCMVal-Diag tool is supporting model development as well as quantifying model improvements, both for different versions of individual models and for different generations of community-wide collections of models used in international assessments. The code allows further extensions by different users for different applications and types, e.g. to other components of the Earth System. User modifications are encouraged and easy to perform with a minimum of coding.

Description: Description of a hybrid ice sheet-shelf model, and application to Antarctica Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1077-1134, 2012 Author(s): D. Pollard and R. M. DeConto The formulation of a 3-D ice sheet-shelf model is described. The model is designed for long-term continental-scale applications, and has been used mostly in paleoclimatic studies. It uses a hybrid combination of the scaled Shallow Ice and Shallow Shelf Approximations for ice flow. Floating ice shelves and grounding-line migration are included, with parameterized ice fluxes at grounding lines that allows relatively coarse resolutions to be used. All significant components and parameterizations of the model are described in some detail. Basic results for modern Antarctica are compared with observations, and simulations over the last 5 million yr are shown to be similar to previously published results using an earlier model version. The sensitivity of ice retreat during the last deglaciation to basal sliding coefficients is discussed.

Description: A new marine ecosystem model for the University of Victoria Earth system climate model Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1135-1201, 2012 Author(s): D. P. Keller, A. Oschlies, and M. Eby Earth system climate models (ESCMs) are valuable tools that can be used to gain a better understanding of the climate system, global biogeochemical cycles, and how anthropogenically-driven changes may affect them. Here we describe improvements made to the marine biogeochemical ecosystem component of the University of Victoria's ESCM (version 2.9). Major changes include corrections to the code and equations describing phytoplankton light limitation and zooplankton grazing, the implementation of a more realistic zooplankton growth and grazing model, and the implementation of an iron limitation scheme to constrain phytoplankton growth. The new model is evaluated after a 10 000-yr spin-up and compared to both the previous version and observations. For the majority of biogeochemical tracers and ecosystem processes the new model shows significant improvements when compared to the previous version and evaluated against observations. Many of the improvements are due to better simulation of seasonal changes in higher latitude ecosystems and the effect that this has on ocean biogeochemistry. This improved model is intended to provide a basic new ESCM model component, which can be used as is or expanded upon (i.e., the addition of new tracers), for climate change and biogeochemical cycling research.

Description: Development of a parameterization of black carbon aging for use in general circulation models Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1263-1293, 2012 Author(s): N. Oshima and M. Koike A parameterization of black carbon (BC) aging in the atmosphere is developed for use in general circulation models (GCMs) that separately treats size distributions of hydrophobic BC and hydrophilic BC using lognormal modes. The rate of BC aging is expressed as the conversion rate from hydrophobic BC to hydrophilic BC modes (i.e., inverse of the e-folding time of the conversion, 1/ τ BC ). In this study, the conversion rates are estimated using results of detailed calculations by a size and mixing state resolved aerosol box model with numerous initial conditions. We introduce a new concept, the hydrophobic-BC-mass-normalized coating rate ( V BC ), defined as the rate of increase of the mass concentration of condensed materials on hydrophobic BC normalized by the hydrophobic BC mass concentration. Although the conversion rate largely varies depending on the atmospheric conditions and the concentrations of chemical species, we find that the variations of the conversion rate are generally expressed well by a unique function of V BC for given lognormal size distributions of hydrophobic BC. The parameterized conversion rate is expressed as a function of V BC , which enables the representation of diurnal and seasonal variations of the BC aging rate and its spatial differences in polluted and clean air, while other widely used constant conversion rates cannot. Application of our newly developed parameterization to GCMs will provide more reliable estimates of the spatial distribution of BC and its radiative effects at regional and global scales.

Description: Pre-industrial and mid-Pliocene simulations with NorESM-L – AGCM simulations Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 1203-1227, 2012 Author(s): Z. Zhang and Q. Yan In the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP), two sets of experiments are suggested. One includes a reference and a mid-Pliocene experiment run with atmosphere general circulation models (AGCM experiments, referred to as Experiments I), the other includes a pre-industrial and a mid-Pliocene experiment run with coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation models (AOGCM experiments, referred to as Experiment II). In this paper, we describe the AGCM experiments with the atmosphere model in the low resolution version of the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM-L), and also assess the potential uncertainties in analyzing mid-Pliocene climate anomalies, due to choosing SST fields for the reference experiment. We carry out a mid-Pliocene experiment, a control experiment forced by the modern SST fields, and a pre-industrial experiment forced by the monthly SST fields from HadISST averaged between 1879 and 1900. Our experiments illustrate that the simulated mid-Pliocene global annual mean SAT is 17.1 °C. It is 2.5 °C warmer than the control experiment, but 2.7 °C warmer than the pre-industrial experiment. We find that the uncertainties in analyses of mid-Pliocene climate anomalies are small on a global scale, but still large on a regional scale. On the regional scale, these uncertainties should be noticed and assessed in future PlioMIP studies.

Description: Geomagnetic jerks characterization via spectral analysis Solid Earth, 3, 131-148, 2012 Author(s): B. Duka, A. De Santis, M. Mandea, A. Isac, and E. Qamili In this study we have applied spectral techniques to analyze geomagnetic field time-series provided by observatories, and compared the results with those obtained from analogous analyses of synthetic data estimated from models. Then, an algorithm is here proposed to detect the geomagnetic jerks in time-series, mainly occurring in the eastern component of the geomagnetic field. Applying such analysis to time-series generated from global models has allowed us to depict the most important space-time features of the geomagnetic jerks all over the globe, since the beginning of XXth century. Finally, the spherical harmonic power spectrum of the third derivative of the main geomagnetic field has been computed from 1960 to 2002.5, bringing new insights to understand the spatial evolution of these rapid changes of the geomagnetic field.

Description: Paleointensities on 8 ka obsidian from Mayor Island, New Zealand Solid Earth, 2, 259-270, 2011 Author(s): A. Ferk, R. Leonhardt, K.-U. Hess, and D. B. Dingwell The 8 ka BP (6050 BCE) pantelleritic obsidian flow on Mayor Island, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, has been investigated using 30 samples from two sites. Due to a very high paramagnetic/ferromagnetic ratio, it was not possible to determine the remanence carriers. This is despite the fact that the samples were studied intensively at low, room, and high temperatures. We infer that a stable remanence within the samples is carried by single- or close to single-domain particles. Experiments to determine the anisotropy of thermoremanence tensor and the dependency on cooling rate were hampered due to alteration resulting from the repeated heating of the samples to temperatures just below the glass transition. Nonetheless, a well-defined mean paleointensity of 57.0 ± 1.0 μT, based on individual high quality paleointensity determinations, was obtained. This field value compares very well to a paleointensity of 58.1 ± 2.9 μT, which Tanaka et al. (2009) obtained for 5500 BCE at a site 100 km distant. Agreement with geomagnetic field models, however, is poor. Thus, gathering more high-quality paleointensity data for the Pacific region and for the southern hemisphere in general to better constrain global field models is very important.

Description: Implementation of splitting methods for air pollution modeling Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 2937-2972, 2011 Author(s): M. Schlegel, O. Knoth, M. Arnold, and R. Wolke Explicit time integration methods are characterized by a small numerical effort per time step. In the application to multiscale problems in atmospheric modeling, this benefit is often more than compensated by stability problems and step size restrictions resulting from stiff chemical reaction terms and from a locally varying Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition for the advection terms. Splitting methods may be applied to efficiently combine implicit and explicit methods (IMEX splitting). Complementarily multirate time integration schemes allow for a local adaptation of the time step size to the grid size. In combination these approaches lead to schemes which are efficient in terms of evaluations of the right hand side. Special challenges arise when these methods are to be implemented. For an efficient implementation it is crucial to locate and exploit redundancies. Furthermore the more complex program flow may lead to computational overhead which in the worst case more than compensates the theoretical gain in efficiency. We present a general splitting approach which allows both for IMEX splittings and for local time step adaptation. The main focus is on an efficient implementation of this approach for parallel computation on computer clusters.

Description: Simulations over South Asia using the Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem): set-up and meteorological evaluation Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 3067-3125, 2011 Author(s): R. Kumar, M. Naja, G. G. Pfister, M. C. Barth, and G. P. Brasseur The configuration and evaluation of the meteorology is presented for simulations over the South Asian region using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem). Temperature, water vapor, dew point temperature, zonal and meridional wind components, precipitation and tropopause pressure are evaluated against radiosonde and satellite-borne (AIRS and TRMM) observations along with NCEP/NCAR reanalysis fields for the year 2008. Chemical fields, with focus on tropospheric ozone, are evaluated in a separate paper. The spatial and temporal variability in meteorological variables is well simulated by the model with temperature, dew point temperature and precipitation showing higher values during summer/monsoon and lower during winter. The index of agreement for all the parameters is estimated to be greater than 0.6 indicating that WRF-Chem is capable of simulating the variations around the observed mean. The mean bias (MB) and root mean square error (RMSE) in modeled temperature, water vapor and wind components show an increasing tendency with altitude. MB and RMSE values are within ±2 K and 1–4 K for temperature, 30% and 20–65% for water vapor and 1.6 m s −1 and 5.1 m s −1 for wind components. The spatio-temporal variability of precipitation is also reproduced reasonably well by the model but the model overestimates precipitation in summer and underestimates precipitation during other seasons. Such a behavior of modeled precipitation is in agreement with previous studies on South Asian monsoon. The comparison with radiosonde observations indicates a relatively better model performance for inland sites as compared to coastal and island sites. The MB and RMSE in tropopause pressure are estimated to be less than 25 hPa. Sensitivity simulations show that biases in meteorological simulations can introduce errors of ±(10–25%) in simulations of tropospheric ozone, CO and NO x . Nevertheless, a comparison of statistical metrics with benchmarks indicates that the model simulated meteorology is of sufficient quality for use in chemistry simulations.

Description: Wavelet-based spatial comparison technique for analysing and evaluating two-dimensional geophysical model fields Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 3161-3183, 2011 Author(s): S. Saux Picart, M. Butenschön, and J. D. Shutler Complex numerical models of the Earth's environment, based around 3-D or 4-D time and space domains are routinely used for applications including climate predictions, weather forecasts, fishery management and environmental impact assessments. Quantitatively assessing the ability of these models to accurately reproduce geographical patterns at a range of spatial and temporal scales has always been a difficult problem to address. However, this is crucial if we are to rely on these models for decision making. Satellite data are potentially the only observational dataset able to cover the large spatial domains analysed by many types of geophysical models. Consequently optical wavelength satellite data is beginning to be used to evaluate model hindcast fields of terrestrial and marine environments. However, these satellite data invariably contain regions of occluded or missing data due to clouds, further complicating or impacting on any comparisons with the model. A methodology has recently been developed to evaluate precipitation forecasts using radar observations. It allows model skill to be evaluated at a range of spatial scales and rain intensities. Here we extend the original method to allow its generic application to a range of continuous and discontinuous geophysical data fields, and therefore allowing its use with optical satellite data. This is achieved through two major improvements to the original method: (i) all thresholds are determined based on the statistical distribution of the input data, so no a priori knowledge about the model fields being analysed is required and (ii) occluded data can be analysed without impacting on the metric results. The method can be used to assess a model's ability to simulate geographical patterns over a range of spatial scales. We illustrate how the method provides a compact and concise way of visualising the degree of agreement between spatial features in two datasets. The application of the new method, its handling of bias and occlusion and the advantages of the novel method are demonstrated through analyzing model fields from a marine ecosystem model.

Description: Mass-flux subgrid-scale parameterization in analogy with multi-component flows: a formulation towards scale independence Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 3127-3160, 2011 Author(s): J.-I. Yano The mass-flux parameterization formulation is generalized by taking an analogy of the large-scale atmospheric flow with multi-component flows. This generalization permits to include any subgrid-scale variability into the mass-flux parameterization. Those include stratiform clouds as well as cold pools in the boundary layer. An important finding under the present formulation is that the subgrid-scale quantities are advected by the velocities characteristic of given subgrid-scale components (subcomponent flows), rather than by the large-scale flows as simply defined by grid-box average. This formulation, as a result, ensures the lateral interaction of subgrid-scale variability crossing the grid boxes, which are missing in the current parameterizations, and leading to a reduction of the grid-size dependence in its performance. It is shown that the subcomponent flows are driven by subcomponent pressure gradients. The formulation, as a result, furthermore includes a self-contained description of subgrid-scale momentum transport. The formulation is applicable to a situation in which the scale separation is still satisfied, but fractional areas occupied by individual subgrid-scale components are no longer small. A complete formulation is presented and various implementation issues are discussed. The present formulation is also expected to alleviate problems arising from increasing resolutions of operational forecast models without invoking more extensive overhaul of parameterizations. The main purpose of the present paper is to appeal the importance of this new possibility suggested herein to the numerical weather forecast community with implications for the other parameteizations (cloud fraction, mesoscale organization) as well as resolution-dependence of parameterizations.

Description: Influence of parallel computational uncertainty on simulations of the Coupled General Climate Model Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 3295-3312, 2011 Author(s): Z. Song, F. Qiao, X. Lei, and C. Wang This paper investigates the impact of the parallel computational uncertainty on climate simulations using the Community Climate System Model Version 3 (CCSM3). A series of sensitivity experiments have been conducted and the analyses are focused on the Global and Nino3.4 sea surface temperatures. It is shown that the amplitude of the deviation induced by the parallel computational uncertainty is the same order as that of the climate system change. However, the ensemble mean method can reduce the influence and the ensemble member number of 15 is enough to ignore simulated errors. For climatology, the influence can be ignored when the climatological mean is calculated by using more than 30-yr simulations. It is also found that the parallel computational uncertainty has no effect on the simulated periods of climate variability such as ENSO. Finally, it is suggested that the influence of the parallel computational uncertainty on Coupled General Climate Models (CGCMs) can be a quality standard or a metric for developing CGCMs.

Description: Importance of the surface size distribution of erodible material: an improvement of the Dust Entrainment And Deposition DEAD Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 2893-2936, 2011 Author(s): M. Mokhtari, L. Gomes, P. Tulet, and T. Rezoug This paper is based on dust aerosol cycle modelling in the atmospheric model ALADIN (Aire Limitée Adaptation dynamique Développement InterNational) coupled with the EXternalised SURFace scheme SURFEX. Its main goal is to create a global mineral dust emission parameterization compatible with the global database of land surface parameters ECOCLIMAP and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) soil type database in SURFEX, based on both Shao (1993) and Marticorena and Bergametti (1995) parameterizations. An arrangement on the Dust Entrainment And Deposition scheme (DEAD) is proposed in this paper by introducing the geographic variation of surface size distribution, the Marticorena and Bergametti (1995) formulation of horizontal saltation flux and the Shao (2001) formulation of sandblasting efficiency α. To show the importance of the modifications introduced in the code DEAD, both sensitivity and comparative studies are realized in 0 dimensions (0-D) and then in 3 dimensions (3-D) between the old DEAD and that developed in this paper. The results in the 0-D simulations indicate that the developed DEAD scheme represents the dust source emission better, particularly in the Bodélé depression and provides a reasonable friction threshold velocity. In 3-D simulations, small differences are found between the DEAD and developed DEAD schemes for the simulated Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) compared with the photometer AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) measurements available in the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses (AMMA) databases. But, for the surface concentration a remarkable improvement is noted for the developed DEAD scheme.

Description: Detection, tracking and event localization of interesting features in 4-D atmospheric data Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 3013-3045, 2011 Author(s): S. Limbach, E. Schömer, and H. Wernli We introduce a novel algorithm for the efficient detection and tracking of interesting features in spatial-temporal atmospheric data, as well as for the precise localization of the occurring genesis, lysis, merging and splitting events. The algorithm is based on the well-known region growing segmentation method. We extended the basic idea towards the analysis of the complete 4-D dataset, identifying segments representing the spatial features and their development over time. Each segment consists of one set of distinct 3-D features per time step. The algorithm keeps track of the successors of each 3-D feature, constructing the so-called event graph of each segment. The precise localization of the splitting events is based on a search for all grid points inside the initial 3-D feature which have a similar distance to all successive 3-D features of the next time step. The merging event is localized analogously considering inverted direction of time. We tested the implementation on a four-dimensional field of wind speed data from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) analyses and computed a climatology of upper-tropospheric jet streams and their events. We compare our results with a previous climatology, investigate the statistical distribution of the merging and splitting events, and illustrate the meteorological significance of the jet splitting events with a case study. A brief outlook is given on additional potential applications of the 4-D data segmentation technique.

Description: The FAMOUS climate model (versions XFXWB and XFHCC): description update to version XDBUA Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 3047-3065, 2011 Author(s): R. S. Smith FAMOUS is an ocean-atmosphere general circulation model of low resolution, based on version 4.5 of the UK MetOffice Unified Model. Here we update the model description to account for changes in the model as it is used in the CMIP5 EMIC model intercomparison project (EMICmip) and a number of other studies. Most of these changes correct errors found in the code. The EMICmip version of the model (XFXWB) has a better-conserved water budget and additional cooling in some high latitude areas, but otherwise has a similar climatology to previous versions of FAMOUS. A variant of XFXWB is also described, with changes to the dynamics at the top of the model which improve the model climatology (XFHCC).

Description: Identifying the causes of differences in ozone production from the CB05 and CBMIV chemical mechanisms Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 2687-2721, 2011 Author(s): R. D. Saylor and A. F. Stein An investigation was conducted to identify the mechanistic differences between two versions of the carbon bond gas-phase chemical mechanism (CB05 and CBMIV) which consistently lead to larger ground-level ozone concentrations being produced in the CB05 version of the National Air Quality Forecasting Capability (NAQFC) modeling system even though the two parallel forecast systems utilize the same meteorology and base emissions and similar initial and boundary conditions. Box models of each of the mechanisms as they are implemented in the NAQFC were created and a set of 12 sensitivity simulations was designed. The sensitivity simulations independently probed the conceptual mechanistic differences between CB05 and CBMIV and were exercised over a 45-scenario simulation suite designed to emulate the wide range of chemical regimes encountered in a continental-scale atmospheric chemistry model. Results of the sensitivity simulations indicate that two sets of reactions that were included in the CB05 mechanism, but which were absent from the CBMIV mechanism, are the primary causes of the greater ozone production in the CB05 version of the NAQFC. One set of reactions recycles the higher organic peroxide species of CB05 (ROOH), resulting in additional photochemically reactive products that act to produce additional ozone in some chemical regimes. The other set of reactions recycles reactive nitrogen from less reactive forms back to NO 2 , increasing the effective NO x concentration of the system. In particular, the organic nitrate species (NTR), which was a terminal product for reactive nitrogen in the CBMIV mechanism, acts as a reservoir species in CB05 to redistribute NO x from major source areas to potentially NO x -sensitive areas where additional ozone may be produced in areas remote from direct NO x sources.

Description: An open ocean record of the Toarcian oceanic anoxic event Solid Earth, 2, 245-257, 2011 Author(s): D. R. Gröcke, R. S. Hori, J. Trabucho-Alexandre, D. B. Kemp, and L. Schwark Oceanic anoxic events were time intervals in the Mesozoic characterized by widespread distribution of marine organic matter-rich sediments (black shales) and significant perturbations in the global carbon cycle. These perturbations are globally recorded in sediments as carbon isotope excursions irrespective of lithology and depositional environment. During the early Toarcian, black shales were deposited on the epi- and pericontinental shelves of Pangaea, and these sedimentary rocks are associated with a pronounced (ca. 7 ‰) negative (organic) carbon isotope excursion (CIE) which is thought to be the result of a major perturbation in the global carbon cycle. For this reason, the lower Toarcian is thought to represent an oceanic anoxic event (the T-OAE). If the T-OAE was indeed a global event, an isotopic expression of this event should be found beyond the epi- and pericontinental Pangaean localities. To address this issue, the carbon isotope composition of organic matter (δ 13 C org of lower Toarcian organic matter-rich cherts from Japan, deposited in the open Panthalassa Ocean, was analysed. The results show the presence of a major (〉6 ‰) negative excursion in δ 13 C org that, based on radiolarian biostratigraphy, is a correlative of the lower Toarcian negative CIE known from Pangaean epi- and pericontinental strata. A smaller negative excursion in δ 13 C org (ca. 2 ‰) is recognized lower in the studied succession. This excursion may, within the current biostratigraphic resolution, represent the excursion recorded in European epicontinental successions close to the Pliensbachian/Toarcian boundary. These results from the open ocean realm suggest, in conjunction with other previously published datasets, that these Early Jurassic carbon cycle perturbations affected the active global reservoirs of the exchangeable carbon cycle (deep marine, shallow marine, atmospheric).

Description: Development and evaluation of a building energy model integrated in the TEB scheme Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 2973-3011, 2011 Author(s): B. Bueno, G. Pigeon, L. K. Norford, and K. Zibouche The use of air-conditioning systems is expected to increase as a consequence of global-scale and urban-scale climate warming. In order to represent future scenarios of urban climate and building energy consumption, the Town Energy Budget (TEB) scheme must be improved. This paper presents a new building energy model (BEM) that has been integrated in the TEB scheme. BEM-TEB makes it possible to represent the energy effects of buildings and building systems on the urban climate and to estimate the building energy consumption at city scale (~10 km) with a resolution of a neighbourhood (~100 m). The physical and geometric definition of buildings in BEM has been intentionally kept as simple as possible, while maintaining the required features of a comprehensive building energy model. The model considers a single thermal zone, where the thermal inertia of building materials associated with multiple levels is represented by a generic thermal mass. The model accounts for heat gains due to transmitted solar radiation, heat conduction through the enclosure, infiltration, ventilation, and internal heat gains. As a difference with respect to other building parameterizations used in urban climate, BEM includes specific models for real air-conditioning systems. It accounts for the dependence of the system capacity and efficiency on indoor and outdoor air temperatures and solves the dehumidification of the air passing through the system. Furthermore, BEM includes specific models for passive systems, such as window shadowing devices and natural ventilation. BEM has satisfactorily passed different evaluation processes, including testing its modelling assumptions, verifying that the chosen equations are solved correctly, and validating the model with field data.

Description: A contrail cirrus prediction model Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 3185-3293, 2011 Author(s): U. Schumann A new model to simulate and predict the properties of a large ensemble of contrails as a function of given air traffic and meteorology is described. The model is designed for approximate prediction of contrail cirrus cover and analysis of contrail climate impact, e.g. within aviation system optimization processes. The model simulates the full contrail life-cycle. Contrail segments form between waypoints of individual aircraft tracks in sufficiently cold and humid air masses. The initial contrail properties depend on the aircraft. The advection and evolution of the contrails is followed with a Lagrangian Gaussian plume model. Mixing and bulk cloud processes are treated quasi analytically or with an effective numerical scheme. Contrails disappear when the bulk ice content is sublimating or precipitating. The model has been implemented in a "Contrail Cirrus Prediction Tool" (CoCiP). This paper describes the model assumptions, the equations for individual contrails, and the analysis-method for contrail-cirrus cover derived from the optical depth of the ensemble of contrails and background cirrus. The model has been applied for a case study and compared to the results of other models and in-situ contrail measurements. The simple model reproduces a considerable part of observed contrail properties. Mid-aged contrails provide the largest contributions to the product of optical depth and contrail width, important for climate impact.

Description: Effect of glacial-interglacial sea-level changes on the displacement and stress field in the forearc and along the plate interface of subduction zones Solid Earth, 3, 63-70, 2012 Author(s): T. Li and A. Hampel Combined seismological, space-geodetic and numerical studies have shown that the seismicity at subduction zones may be modulated by tides and glacier fluctuations on timescales of 1–100 a, because these changes in loads on Earth's surface are able to alter the stress field in the upper plate and along the plate interface. Here we use a two-dimensional finite-element model of a subduction zone to investigate how glacial-interglacial sea-level changes affect the forearc region and the plate interface. The model results show that a sea-level fall by 125 m over 100 ka causes up to 0.7 m of vertical displacement, with the maximum uplift occurring between the trench and the coast. The uplift signal induced by the sea-level fall decreases to zero ~20 km landward of the coastline. A subsequent sea-level rise by 125 m over 20 ka causes subsidence, which is again most pronounced in the submarine part of the forearc. The sea-level changes cause horizontal displacements of up to 0.12 m, which are directed seaward during sea-level fall and landward during sea-level rise. With respect to the stress field, the sea-level changes lead to variations in the vertical stress and the shear stress of up to 1.23 MPa and 0.4 MPa, respectively. The shear stress variations are highest beneath the coast, i.e. in the area where the sea-level changes cause the strongest flexure. The resulting Coulomb stress changes on the plate interface are of the order of 0.2–0.5 MPa and indicate that earthquakes are promoted during sea-level fall and delayed during sea-level rise. Our findings imply that eustatic sea-level changes during glacial-interglacial periods may have induced displacements and stress changes that were large enough to affect the seismic cycle of subduction thrusts.

Description: Seasonal leaf dynamics for tropical evergreen forests in a process based global ecosystem model Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 5, 639-681, 2012 Author(s): M. De Weirdt, H. Verbeeck, F. Maignan, P. Peylin, B. Poulter, D. Bonal, P. Ciais, and K. Steppe The influence of seasonal phenology in tropical humid forests on canopy photosynthesis remains poorly understood and its representation in global vegetation models highly simplified, typically with no seasonal variability of canopy leaf area properties taken into account. However, recent flux tower and remote sensing studies suggest that seasonal phenology in tropical rainforests exerts a large influence over carbon and water fluxes, with feedbacks that can significantly influence climate dynamics. A more realistic description of the underlying mechanisms that drive seasonal tropical forest photosynthesis and phenology could improve the correspondence of global vegetation model outputs with the wet-dry season biogeochemical patterns measured at flux tower sites. Here, we introduce a leaf Net Primary Production (NPP) based canopy dynamics scheme for evergreen tropical forests in the global terrestrial ecosystem model ORCHIDEE and validated the new scheme against in-situ carbon flux measurements. Modelled Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) patterns are analyzed in details for a flux tower site in French Guiana, in a forest where the dry season is short and where the vegetation is considered to have developed adaptive mechanisms against drought stress. By including leaf litterfall seasonality and a coincident light driven leaf flush and seasonal change in photosynthetic capacity in ORCHIDEE, modelled carbon and water fluxes more accurately represent the observations. The fit to GPP flux data was substantially improved and the results confirmed that by modifying canopy dynamics to benefit from increased light conditions, a better representation of the seasonal carbon flux patterns was made.

Description: A dynamic continental runoff routing model applied to the last Northern Hemisphere deglaciation Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 2723-2750, 2011 Author(s): H. Goelzer, I. Janssens, J. Nemec, and P. Huybrechts We describe and evaluate a dynamical continental runoff routing model for the Northern Hemisphere that calculates the runoff pathways in response to topographic modifications due to changes in ice thickness and isostatic adjustment. The algorithm is based on the steepest gradient method and takes as simplifying assumption that depressions are filled at all times and water drains through the lowest outlet points. It also considers changes in water storage and lake drainage that become important in the presence of large ice dammed proglacial lakes. Although applicable to other scenarios as well, the model was conceived to study the routing of freshwater fluxes during the last Northern Hemisphere deglaciation. For that specific application we simulated the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets with an existing 3-D thermomechanical ice sheet model, which calculates changes in topography due to changes in ice cover and isostatic adjustment, as well as the evolution of freshwater fluxes resulting from surface ablation, iceberg calving and basal melt. The continental runoff model takes this input, calculates the drainage pathways and routes the freshwater fluxes to the surface grid points of an existing ocean model. This results in a chronology of temporally and spatially varying freshwater fluxes from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present day. We analyse the dependence of the runoff routing to grid resolution and parameters of the isostatic adjustment module of the ice sheet model.

Description: Description of EQSAM4: gas-liquid-solid partitioning model for global simulations Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 2791-2847, 2011 Author(s): S. Metzger, B. Steil, L. Xu, J. E. Penner, and J. Lelieveld We introduce version 4 of the EQuilibrium Simplified Aerosol Model (EQSAM4), which is part of our aerosol chemistry-microphysics module (GMXe) and chemistry-climate model (EMAC). We focus on the relative humidity of deliquescence (RHD) based water uptake of atmospheric aerosols, as this is important for atmospheric chemistry and climate modeling, e.g. to calculate the aerosol optical depth (AOD). Since the main EQSAM4 applications will involve large-scale, long-term and high-resolution atmospheric chemistry-climate modeling with EMAC, computational efficiency is an important requirement. EQSAM4 parameterizes the composition and water uptake of multicomponent atmospheric aerosols by considering the gas-liquid-solid partitioning of single and mixed solutes. EQSAM4 builds on analytical, and hence CPU efficient, aerosol hygroscopic growth parameterizations to compute the aerosol liquid water content (AWC). The parameterizations are described in the companion paper (Metzger et al., 2011) and only require a compound specific coefficient ν i to derive the single solute molality and the AWC for the whole range of water activity ( a w ). ν i is pre-calculated and applied during runtime by using internal look-up tables. Here, the EQSAM4 equilibrium model is described and compared to the more explicit thermodynamic model ISORROPIA II. Both models are imbedded in EMAC/GMXe. Box model inter-comparisons, including the reference model E-AIM, and global simulations with EMAC show that gas-particle partitioning, including semi-volatiles and water, is in good agreement. A more comprehensive box model inter-comparison of EQSAM4 with EQUISOLV II is subject of the revised publication of Xu et al. (2009), i.e. Xu et al. (2011).

Description: GEWEX Cloud System Study (GCSS) cirrus cloud working group: modelling case development based on 9 March 2000 ARM SGP observations Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 2751-2790, 2011 Author(s): H. Yang, S. Dobbie, G. G. Mace, A. Ross, and M. Quante The GCSS working group on cirrus focuses on inter-comparison of model simulations for models ranging from very detailed microphysical and dynamical models through to general circulation models (GCMs). In the previous GCSS inter-comparison, it was a surprise to the modeling community how much of a range there was in ice water path predictions by different cirrus models for such idealized cases. There was some grouping according to the complexity of models; however, there were no observations with which to distinguish between model performance. The aim of the current GCSS cirrus inter-comparison is to base the study on a rigorously observed case study. In this way, the case may be used to identify which models in the inter-comparison are performing well and highlight areas for model development as well as provide a base case for future models to compare against when being developed or when testing new developments within existing models. In this paper, we present the case development for the current GCSS working group study on cirrus cloud. This paper summarizes how the case was developed and based on the 9 March 2000 Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) intensive observation period (IOP). To our knowledge, this case offers the most detailed case study for cirrus comparison available, with extensive effort to derive the most appropriate large scale forcing as possible which is such a significant determinant of clouds. We anticipate this will offer significant improvement over past comparisons which have mostly been loosely based on observations. Notably this study makes use of retrievals of observations of ice water content, ice number concentration, and fall velocity, thus offering several constraints to evaluate model performance. The case study is developed utilizing various observations including ARM SGP remote sensing including the Millimeter cloud radar (MMCR), radiometers, radiosondes, aircraft observations, satellite observations, objective analysis and complemented with results from the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) model output and bespoke gravity wave simulations using the 3-dimensional velocities over mountains (3DVOM) model. An initial modelling assessment of the case has been shown using the UK Met Office Large Eddy Simulation Model (LEM) which supports the use of this case for the full inter-comparison study.

Description: A Lagrangian model of air-mass photochemistry and mixing using a trajectory ensemble: the Cambridge Tropospheric Trajectory model of Chemistry And Transport (CiTTyCAT) version 4.2 Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 2469-2544, 2011 Author(s): T. A. M. Pugh, M. Cain, J. Methven, O. Wild, S. R. Arnold, E. Real, K. S. Law, K. M. Emmerson, S. M. Owen, J. A . Pyle, C. N. Hewitt, and A. R. MacKenzie A Lagrangian model of photochemistry and mixing is described (CiTTyCAT, stemming from the Cambridge Tropospheric Trajectory model of Chemistry And Transport), which is suitable for transport and chemistry studies throughout the troposphere. Over the last five years, the model has been developed in parallel at several different institutions and here those developments have been incorporated into one "community" model and documented for the first time. The key photochemical developments include a new scheme for biogenic volatile organic compounds and updated emissions schemes. The key physical development is to evolve composition following an ensemble of trajectories within neighbouring air-masses, including a simple scheme for mixing between them via an evolving "background profile", both within the boundary layer and free troposphere. The model runs along trajectories pre-calculated using winds and temperature from meteorological analyses. In addition, boundary layer height and precipitation rates, output from the analysis model, are interpolated to trajectory points and used as inputs to the mixing and wet deposition schemes. The model is most suitable in regimes when the effects of small-scale turbulent mixing are slow relative to advection by the resolved winds so that coherent air-masses form with distinct composition and strong gradients between them. Such air-masses can persist for many days while stretching, folding and thinning. Lagrangian models offer a useful framework for picking apart the processes of air-mass evolution over inter-continental distances, without being hindered by the numerical diffusion inherent to global Eulerian models. The model, including different box and trajectory modes, is described and some output for each of the modes is presented for evaluation. The model is available for download from a Subversion-controlled repository by contacting the corresponding authors.

Description: Geophysical characterisation of two segments of the Møre-Trøndelag Fault Complex, Mid Norway Solid Earth, 2, 125-134, 2011 Author(s): A. Nasuti, C. Pascal, J. Ebbing, and J. F. Tønnesen The Møre-Trøndelag Fault Complex (MTFC) has controlled the tectonic evolution of Mid Norway and its shelf for the past 400 Myr through repeated reactivations during Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and perhaps Cenozoic times, the very last phase of reactivation involving normal to oblique-slip faulting. Despite its pronounced signature in the landscape, its deep structure has largely remained unresolved until now. We focused on two specific segments of the MTFC (i.e. the Tjellefonna and Bæverdalen faults) and acquired multiple geophysical datasets (i.e. gravity, magnetic, resistivity and shallow refraction profiles). A 100–200 m-wide zone of gouge and/or brecciated bedrock steeply dipping to the south is interpreted as being the Tjellefonna fault sensu stricto. The fault appears to be flanked by two additional but minor damage zones. A secondary normal fault also steeply dipping to the south but involving indurated breccias was detected ~1 km farther north. The Bæverdalen fault, ~12 km farther north, is interpreted as a ~700 m-wide and highly deformed zone involving fault gouge, breccias and lenses of intact bedrock. As such, it is probably the most important fault segment in the studied area and accommodated most of the strain during presumably Late Jurassic normal faulting. Our geophysical data are indicative of a Bæverdalen fault dipping steeply towards the south, in agreement with the average orientation of the local tectonic grain. Our findings suggest that the influence of Mesozoic normal faulting along the MTFC on landscape development is more complex than previously thought.

Description: CELLS v1.0: updated and parallelized version of an electrical scheme to simulate multiple electrified clouds and flashes over large domains Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 2849-2892, 2011 Author(s): C. Barthe, M. Chong, J.-P. Pinty, C. Bovalo, and J. Escobar The paper describes the fully parallelized electrical scheme CELLS which is suitable to simulate explicitly electrified storm systems on parallel computers. Our motivation here is to show that a cloud electricity scheme can be developed for use on large grids with complex terrain. Large computational domains are needed to perform real case meteorological simulations with many independent convective cells. The scheme computes the bulk electric charge attached to each cloud particle. Positive and negative ions are also taken into account. Several parametrizations of the dominant non-inductive charging process are included and an inductive charging process as well. The electric field is obtained by inverting the Gauss equation with an extension to terrain-following coordinates. The new feature concerns the lightning flash scheme which is a simplified version of an older detailed sequential scheme. Flashes are composed of a bidirectional leader phase (vertical extension from the triggering point) and a phase obeying a fractal law (with horizontal extension on electrically charged zones). The originality of the scheme lies in the way the branching phase is treated to get a parallel code. The complete electrification scheme is tested for the 10 July 1996 STERAO case and for the 21 July 1998 EULINOX case. Flash characteristics are analysed in detail and additional sensitivity experiments are performed for the STERAO case. Although the simulations were run for flat terrain conditions, they show that the model behaves well on multiprocessor computers. This opens a wide area of application for this electrical scheme with the next objective of running real meteorological case on large domains.

Description: New zircon data supporting models of short-lived igneous activity at 1.89 Ga in the western Skellefte District, central Fennoscandian Shield Solid Earth, 2, 205-217, 2011 Author(s): P. Skyttä, T. Hermansson, J. Andersson, M. Whitehouse, and P. Weihed New U-Th-Pb zircon data (SIMS) from three intrusive phases of the Palaeoproterozoic Viterliden intrusion in the western Skellefte District, central Fennoscandian Shield, dates igneous emplacement in a narrow time interval at about 1.89 Ga. A locally occurring quartz-plagioclase porphyritic tonalite, here dated at 1889 ± 3 Ma, is considered the youngest of the intrusive units, based on the new age data and field evidence. This supports an existing interpretation of its fault-controlled emplacement after intrusion of the dominating hornblende-tonalite units, in this study dated at 1892 ± 3 Ma. The Viterliden magmatism was synchronous with the oldest units of the Jörn type early-orogenic intrusions in the eastern part of the district (1.89–1.88 Ga; cf. Gonzàles Roldán, 2010). A U-Pb zircon age for a felsic metavolcanic rock from the hanging-wall to the Kristineberg VMS deposit, immediately south of the Viterliden intrusion, is constrained at 1883 ± 6 Ma in this study. It provides a minimum age for the Kristineberg ore deposit and suggests contemporaneous igneous/volcanic activity throughout the Skellefte District. Furthermore, it supports the view that the Skellefte Group defines a laterally continuous belt throughout this "ore district". Tentative correlation of the 1889 ± 3 Ma quartz-plagioclase porphyritic tonalite with the Kristineberg "mine porphyry" suggests that these units are coeval at about 1.89 Ga. Based on the new age determinations, the Viterliden intrusion may equally well have intruded into or locally acted as a basement for the ore-hosting Skellefte Group volcanic rocks.

Description: The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), Model description – Part 2: Carbon fluxes and vegetation Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 641-688, 2011 Author(s): D. B. Clark, L. M. Mercado, S. Sitch, C. D. Jones, N. Gedney, M. J. Best, M. Pryor, G. G. Rooney, R. L. H. Essery, E. Blyth, O. Boucher, R. J. Harding, and P. M. Cox The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) is a process-based model that simulates the fluxes of carbon, water, energy and momentum between the land surface and the atmosphere. Past studies with JULES have demonstrated the important role of the land surface in the Earth System. Different versions of JULES have been employed to quantify the effects on the land carbon sink of separately changing atmospheric aerosols and tropospheric ozone, and the response of methane emissions from wetlands to climate change. There was a need to consolidate these and other advances into a single model code so as to be able to study interactions in a consistent manner. This paper describes the consolidation of these advances into the modelling of carbon fluxes and stores, in the vegetation and soil, in version 2.2 of JULES. Features include a multi-layer canopy scheme for light interception, including a sunfleck penetration scheme, a coupled scheme of leaf photosynthesis and stomatal conductance, representation of the effects of ozone on leaf physiology, and a description of methane emissions from wetlands. JULES represents the carbon allocation, growth and population dynamics of five plant functional types. The turnover of carbon from living plant tissues is fed into a 4-pool soil carbon model. The process-based descriptions of key ecological processes and trace gas fluxes in JULES mean that this community model is well-suited for use in carbon cycle, climate change and impacts studies, either in standalone mode or as the land component of a coupled Earth system model.

Description: Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP): experimental design and boundary conditions (Experiment 2) Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 445-456, 2011 Author(s): A. M. Haywood, H. J. Dowsett, M. M. Robinson, D. K. Stoll, A. M. Dolan, D. J. Lunt, B. Otto-Bliesner, and M. A. Chandler The Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project has expanded to include a model intercomparison for the mid-Pliocene warm period (~3.3 to 3.0 million yr ago). This project is referred to as PlioMIP (Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project). Two experiments have been agreed and together compose phase 1 of PlioMIP. The first (Experiment 1) is being performed with atmosphere-only climate models. The second (Experiment 2) is utilising fully coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models. Following on from the publication of the experimental design and boundary conditions for Experiment 1 in Geoscientific Model Development, this short paper provides the necessary description of differences and/or additions to the experimental design for Experiment 2.

Description: The atmosphere-ocean general circulation model EMAC-MPIOM Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 457-495, 2011 Author(s): A. Pozzer, P. Jöckel, B. Kern, and H. Haak The ECHAM/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC) model is coupled to the ocean general circulation model MPIOM using the Modular Earth Submodel Sytem (MESSy) interface. MPIOM is operated as a MESSy submodel, thus the need of an external coupler is avoided. The coupling method is tested for different model configurations, proving to be very flexible in terms of parallel decomposition and very well load balanced. The run time performance analysis and the simulation results are compared to those of the COSMOS (Community earth System MOdelS) climate model, using the same configurations for the atmosphere and the ocean in both model systems. It is shown that our coupling method is, for the tested conditions, approximately 10% more efficient compared to the coupling based on the OASIS (Ocean Atmosphere Sea Ice Soil, version 3) coupler. The standard (CMIP3) climate model simulations performed with EMAC-MPIOM show that the results are comparable to those of other Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation models.

Description: The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), Model description – Part 1: Energy and water fluxes Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 595-640, 2011 Author(s): M. J. Best, M. Pryor, D. B. Clark, G. G. Rooney, R. L. H. Essery, C. B. Ménard, J. M. Edwards, M. A. Hendry, A. Porson, N. Gedney, L. M. Mercado, S. Sitch, E. Blyth, O. Boucher, P. M. Cox, C. S. B. Grimmond, and R. J. Harding This manuscript describes the energy and water components of a new community land surface model called the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES). This is developed from the Met Office Surface Exchange Scheme (MOSES). It can be used as a stand alone land surface model driven by observed forcing data, or coupled to an atmospheric global circulation model. The JULES model has been coupled to the Met Office Unified Model (UM) and as such provides an opportunity for the research community to contribute their research into world-leading operational weather forecasting and climate change prediction systems. JULES has a modular structure aligned to physical processes, providing the basis for a flexible modelling platform.

Description: Evaluation of ice and snow content in the global numerical weather prediction model GME with CloudSat Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 419-443, 2011 Author(s): S. Eikenberg, K. Fröhlich, A. Seifert, S. Crewell, and M. Mech The present study evaluates the global numerical weather prediction model GME with respect to frozen particles, both ice and snow, focusing on the performance of a diagnostic versus a prognostic precipitation scheme. As a reference, CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar observations are utilized – the so far only near-globally available data set which vertically resolves clouds. Both the observation-to-model and the model-to-observation approach are applied and compared to each other. For the latter, the radar simulator QuickBeam is utilized. Criteria are applied to further improve the comparability between model and observations. The two model versions are statistically evaluated for a four-month period. The comparison reveals that the prognostic scheme reproduces the shape of the CloudSat frequency distributions for both ice water content (IWC) and reflectivity factor well, while the diagnostic scheme produces no large IWCs or reflectivity factors because snow falls out instantaneously. However, the prognostic scheme overestimates the occurrence of high ice water paths (IWP), especially in the mid-latitudes. Sensitivity tests show that an increased fall speed of snow successfully reduces IWP. Both approaches capture the general features, but for details, the two together deliver the largest informational content. In case of limited resources, the model-to-observation approach is preferred. Finally, the results indicate that the lack of IWC in most global circulation models might be attributed to the use of diagnostic precipitation schemes, i.e., the lack of snow aloft. Based on its good performance the prognostic scheme went into operational mode in February 2010. The adjusted snow fall speed went operational in December 2010. However, continual improvements of the ice microphysics are necessary, which can be assessed by the proposed evaluation technique.

Description: The model of self-generated seismo-electromagnetic oscillations of the LAI system Solid Earth, 2, 17-23, 2011 Author(s): M. K. Kachakhidze, Z. A. Kereselidze, and N. K. Kachakhidze Very low frequency (VLF) electromagnetic radiation (in diapason 1 kHz–1 MHz) in the atmosphere, generated during an earthquake preparation period, may be connected with the linear size characterising the expected earthquake focus. In order to argue this hypothesis, a very simple quasi-electrostatic model is used: the local VLF radiation may represent the self-generated (own) electromagnetic oscillations of interactive seismoactive segments of the lithosphere-atmosphere system. This model qualitatively explains the well-known precursor effects of earthquakes. In addition, using this model after diagnosing existing data makes it principally possible to forecast an expected earthquake with certain precision. As a physical basis of the working hypothesis is the atmospheric effect of polarization charges occurring in the surface layer of the Earth, it is possible to test the following constructed model in the Earth's crust, where the reason for polarization charge generation may be different from piezo-electric mechanism, e.g., some other mechanism.

Description: The role of phytoplankton dynamics in the seasonal variability of carbon in the subpolar North Atlantic – a modeling study Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 289-342, 2011 Author(s): S. R. Signorini, S. Häkkinen, K. Gudmundsson, A. Olsen, A. M. Omar, J. Olafsson, G. Reverdin, S. A. Henson, and C. R. McClain We use an ecosystem/biogeochemical model, which includes multiple phytoplankton functional groups and carbon cycle dynamics, to investigate physical-biological interactions in Icelandic waters. Satellite and in situ data were used to validate the model. The seasonality of the coccolithophore and "other phytoplankton" (diatoms and dinoflagellates) blooms is in general agreement with satellite ocean color products. Nutrient supply, biomass and calcite concentrations are modulated by light and mixed layer depth seasonal cycles. Diatoms are the most abundant with a large bloom in early spring and a secondary bloom in fall. The diatom bloom is followed by blooms of dinoflagellates and coccolithophores. The effect of biological changes on the seasonal variability of the surface ocean p CO 2 is nearly twice the temperature effect. The inclusion of multiple functional groups in the model played a major role in the accurate representation of CO 2 uptake by biology. For instance, at the peak of the bloom, the exclusion of coccolithophores causes an increase in alkalinity of up to 4 μmol kg −1 with a corresponding increase in DIC of up to 16 μmol kg −1 . The net effect of the absence of the coccolithophores bloom is an increase in p CO 2 of more than 20 μatm and a reduction of atmospheric CO 2 uptake of more than 6 mmol m −2 d −1 .

Description: Ground-level ozone concentration over Spain: an application of Kalman Filter post-processing to reduce model uncertainties Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 343-384, 2011 Author(s): V. Sicardi, J. Ortiz, A. Rincón, O. Jorba, M. T. Pay, S. Gassó, and J. M. Baldasano The CALIOPE air quality modelling system, namely WRF-ARW/HERMES-EMEP/CMAQ/BSC-DREAM8b, has been used to perform the simulation of ground level O 3 concentration for the year 2004, over the Iberian Peninsula. We use this system to study the daily ground-level O 3 maximum. We investigate the use of a post-processing such as the Kalman Filter bias-adjustment technique to improve the simulated O 3 maximum. The Kalman Filter bias-adjustment technique is a recursive algorithm to optimally estimate bias-adjustment terms from previous measurements and model results. The bias-adjustment technique is found to improve the simulated O 3 maximum for the entire year and the whole domain. The corrected simulation presents improvements in statistical indicators such as correlation, root mean square error, mean bias, standard deviation, and gross error. After the post-processing the exceedances of O 3 concentration limits, as established by the European Directive 2008/50/CE, are better reproduced and the uncertainty of the modelling system is reduced from 20% to 7.5%. Such uncertainty in the model results is under the established EU limit of the 50%. Significant improvements in the O 3 average daily cycle and in its amplitude are also observed after the post-processing. The systematic improvements in the O 3 maximum simulations suggest that the Kalman Filter post-processing method is a suitable technique to reproduce accurate estimate of ground-level O 3 concentration.

Description: An aerosol dynamics model for simulating particle formation and growth in a mixed flow chamber Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 385-417, 2011 Author(s): M. Vesterinen, H. Korhonen, J. Joutsensaari, P. Yli-Pirilä, A. Laaksonen, and K. E. J. Lehtinen In this work we model the aerosol size distribution dynamics in a mixed flow chamber in which new particles are formed via nucleation and subsequent condensation of oxidation products of VOCs emitted from Norway spruce seedlings. The microphysical processes included in the model are nucleation, condensation, deposition and coagulation. The aerosol dynamics in the chamber is a competition between aerosol growth and scavenging/deposition which results in a cyclic particle formation process. With a simple 1-product model, in which the formed gas is able to both condense to the particles and nucleate, we are able to catch both the oscillatory features of the particle formation process and the evolution of the number concentration in a reasonable way. The gas-phase chemistry was adjusted using pre-estimated reaction rate constant in the simulations and the particle deposition rate as a function of size was determined experimentally. Despite this, some of the essential features of the physical properties of the aerosol population could still be captured and investigated without the detailed knowledge of the physical processes underlying the problem by using the constructed model. The size dependency of the wall loss coefficient was investigated using a slightly modified measurement set-up.

Description: The CSIRO Mk3L climate system model version 1.0 – Part 1: Description and evaluation Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 219-287, 2011 Author(s): S. J. Phipps, L. D. Rotstayn, H. B. Gordon, J. L. Roberts, A. C. Hirst, and W. F. Budd The CSIRO Mk3L climate system model is a coupled general circulation model, designed primarily for millennial-scale climate simulations and palaeoclimate research. Mk3L includes components which describe the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and land surface, and combines computational efficiency with a stable and realistic control climatology. This paper describes the model physics and software, and evaluates its ability to simulate the present-day climate. Mk3L incorporates a spectral atmospheric general circulation model, a z -coordinate ocean general circulation model, a dynamic-thermodynamic sea ice model and a land surface scheme with static vegetation. The source code is highly portable, and has no dependence upon proprietary software. The model distribution is freely available to the research community. A 1000-year climate simulation can be completed in around one-and-a-half months on a typical desktop computer, with greater throughput being possible on high-performance computing facilities. Mk3L produces realistic simulations of the larger-scale features of the present-day climate, although with some biases on the regional scale. The model also produces reasonable representations of the leading modes of internal climate variability in both the tropics and extratropics. The control state of the model exhibits a high degree of stability, with only a weak cooling trend on millennial timescales. Ongoing development work aims to improve the model climatology and transform Mk3L into a comprehensive earth system model.

Description: Validation of modelled forest biomass in Germany using BETHY/DLR Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 1685-1722, 2011 Author(s): M. Tum, M. Buchhorn, K. P. Günther, and B. C. Haller We present a new approach to the validation of modelled forest Net Primary Productivity (NPP), using empirical data on the mean annual increment, or MAI, in above-ground forest stock. The dynamic biomass model BETHY/DLR is used to estimate the NPP of forest areas in Germany, driven by remote sensing data from VEGETATION, meteorological data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and additional tree coverage information from the MODIS Vegetation Continuous Field (VCF). The output of BETHY/DLR, Gross Primary Productivity (GPP), is converted to NPP by subtracting the cumulative plant maintenance and growth respiration, and then validated against MAI data derived from German forestry inventories. Validation is conducted for 2000 and 2001 by converting modelled NPP to stem volume at a regional level. Our analysis shows that the presented method fills an important gap in methods for validating modelled NPP against empirically derived data. In addition, we examine theoretical energy potentials calculated from the modelled and validated NPP, assuming sustainable forest management and using species-specific tree heating values. Such estimated forest biomass energy potentials play an important role in the sustainable energy debate.

Description: A subgrid parameterization scheme for precipitation Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 1643-1684, 2011 Author(s): S. Turner, J.-L. Brenguier, and C. Lac With increasing computing power, the horizontal resolution of numerical weather prediction (NWP) models is improving and today reaches 1 to 5 km. Nevertheless, clouds and precipitation are still subgrid scale processes for most cloud types, such as cumulus and stratocumulus. Subgrid scale parameterizations for water vapor condensation have been in use for many years and are based on a prescribed PDF of relative humidity spatial variability within the grid, thus providing a diagnosis of the cloud fraction. A similar scheme is developed and tested here. It is based on a prescribed PDF of cloud water variability and a threshold value of liquid water content for droplet collection to derive a rain fraction within the model grid. Precipitation of rainwater raises additional concerns relative to the overlap of cloud and rain fractions, however. The scheme is developed following an analysis of data collected during field campaigns in stratocumulus (DYCOMS-II) and fair weather cumulus (RICO) and tested in a 1-D framework against large eddy simulations of these observed cases. The new parameterization is then implemented in a 3-D NWP model with a horizontal resolution of 2.5 km to simulate real cases of precipitating cloud systems over France.

Description: Optical method for measuring bed topography and flow depth in an experimental flume Solid Earth, 2, 143-154, 2011 Author(s): A. Limare, M. Tal, M. D. Reitz, E. Lajeunesse, and F. Métivier We describe an optical method known as moiré for acquiring quasi-simultaneous measurements of bed topography and flow depth in laboratory experiments. The moiré method is based on projecting a fringe pattern (grating) on the bed and analyzing the deformation of the pattern caused by the topography with respect to a reference plane. The height of the object is encoded in the phase of the pattern and can be retrieved either through Fourier transform or phase shifting algorithms. The methodology enables image-based non-contact measurements over a continuous surface at very high spatial and temporal resolutions. We use a commercial software package of a moiré method called Light3D to map bed topography and flow depth in an experimental braided channel and demonstrate how the method can be used to characterize a full range of statistics not previously possible.

Description: The 1-way on-line coupled atmospheric chemistry model system MECO(n) – Part 3: Meteorological evaluation of the on-line coupled system Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 1533-1567, 2011 Author(s): C. Hofmann, A. Kerkweg, H. Wernli, and P. Jöckel Three detailed meteorological case studies are conducted with the global and regional atmospheric chemistry model system ECHAM5/MESSy(→COSMO/MESSy) n , shortly named MECO(n), in order to assess the general performance of the on-line coupling of the regional model COSMO to the global model ECHAM5. The cases are characterised by intense weather systems in Central Europe: an intense cold frontal passage in March 2010, a convective frontal event in July 2007, and the high impact winter storm "Kyrill" in January 2007. Simulations are performed with the new on-line-coupled model system and compared to classical, off-line COSMO hindcast simulations driven by ECMWF analyses. Precipitation observations from rain gauges and ECMWF analysis fields are used as reference, and both qualitative and quantitative measures are used to characterise the quality of the various simulations. It is shown that, not surprisingly, simulations with a shorter lead time generally produce more accurate simulations. Irrespective of lead time, the accuracy of the on-line and off-line COSMO simulations are comparable for the three cases. This result indicates that the new global and regional model system MECO(n) is able to simulate key mid-latitude weather systems, including cyclones, fronts, and convective precipitation, as accurately as present-day state-of-the-art regional weather prediction models in standard off-line configuration. Therefore, MECO(n) will be applied in the near future to simulate atmospheric chemistry exploring the model's full capabilities during meteorologically challenging conditions.

Description: First observational evidence for the CO 2 -driven origin of Stromboli's major explosions Solid Earth, 2, 135-142, 2011 Author(s): A. Aiuppa, M. Burton, P. Allard, T. Caltabiano, G. Giudice, S. Gurrieri, M. Liuzzo, and G. Salerno We report on the first detection of CO 2 flux precursors of the till now unforecastable "major" explosions that intermittently occur at Strombolivolcano (Italy). An automated survey of the crater plume emissions in the period 2006–2010, during which 12 such explosions happened, demonstrated that these events are systematically preceded by a brief phase of increasing CO 2 /SO 2 weight ratio (up to 〉40) and CO 2 flux (〉1300 t d −1 ) with respect to the time-averaged values of 3.7 and ~500 t d −1 typical for standard Stromboli's activity. These signals are best explained by the accumulation of CO 2 -rich gas at a discontinuity of the plumbing system (decreasing CO 2 emission at the surface), followed by increasing gas leakage prior to the explosion. Our observations thus supports the recent model of Allard (2010) for a CO 2 -rich gas trigger of recurrent major explosions at Stromboli, and demonstrates the possibility to forecast these events in advance from geochemical precursors. These observations and conclusions have clear implications for monitoring strategies at other open-vent basaltic volcanoes worldwide.

Description: The CSIRO Mk3L climate system model v1.0 coupled to the CABLE land surface scheme v1.4b: evaluation of the control climatology Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 1611-1642, 2011 Author(s): J. Mao, S. J. Phipps, A. J. Pitman, Y. P. Wang, G. Abramowitz, and B. Pak The CSIRO Mk3L climate system model, a reduced-resolution coupled general circulation model, has previously been described in this journal. The model is configured for millennium scale or multiple century scale simulations. This paper reports the impact of replacing the relatively simple land surface scheme that is the default parameterisation in Mk3L with a sophisticated land surface model that simulates the terrestrial energy, water and carbon balance in a physically and biologically consistent way. An evaluation of the new model's near-surface climatology highlights strengths and weaknesses, but overall the atmospheric variables, including the near-surface air temperature and precipitation, are simulated well. The impact of the more sophisticated land surface model on existing variables is relatively small, but generally positive. More significantly, the new land surface scheme allows an examination of surface carbon-related quantities including net primary productivity which adds significantly to the capacity of Mk3L. Overall, results demonstrate that this reduced-resolution climate model is a good foundation for exploring long time scale phenomena. The addition of the more sophisticated land surface model enables an exploration of important Earth System questions including land cover change and abrupt changes in terrestrial carbon storage.

Description: Improved convergence and stability properties in a three-dimensional higher-order ice sheet model Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 1569-1610, 2011 Author(s): J. J. Fürst, O. Rybak, H. Goelzer, B. De Smedt, P. de Groen, and P. Huybrechts We present a novel finite difference implementation of a three-dimensional higher-order ice sheet model that performs well both in terms of convergence rate and numerical stability. In order to achieve these benefits the discretisation of the governing force balance equation makes extensive use of information on staggered grid points. Using the same iterative solver, an existing discretisation that operates exclusively on the regular grid serves as a reference. Participation in the ISMIP-HOM benchmark indicates that both discretisations are capable of reproducing the higher-order model inter-comparison results. This allows a direct comparison not only of the resultant velocity fields but also of the solver's convergence behaviour which holds main differences. First and foremost, the new finite difference scheme facilitates convergence by a factor of up to 7 and 2.6 in average. In addition to this decrease in computational costs, the precision for the resultant velocity field can be chosen higher in the novel finite difference implementation. For high precisions, the old discretisation experiences difficulties to converge due to large variation in the velocity fields of consecutive Picard iterations. Finally, changing discretisation prevents build-up of local field irregularites that occasionally cause divergence of the solution for the reference discretisation. The improved behaviour makes the new discretisation more reliable for extensive application to real ice geometries. Higher precision and robust numerics are crucial in time dependent applications since numerical oscillations in the velocity field of subsequent time steps are attenuated and divergence of the solution is prevented. Transient applications also benefit from the increased computational efficiency.

Description: MIROC-ESM: model description and basic results of CMIP5-20c3m experiments Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 1063-1128, 2011 Author(s): S. Watanabe, T. Hajima, K. Sudo, T. Nagashima, T. Takemura, H. Okajima, T. Nozawa, H. Kawase, M. Abe, T. Yokohata, T. Ise, H. Sato, E. Kato, K. Takata, S. Emori, and M. Kawamiya An earth system model (MIROC-ESM) is fully described in terms of each model component and their interactions. Results for the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5) historical simulation are presented to demonstrate the model's performance from several perspectives: atmosphere, ocean, sea-ice, land-surface, ocean and terrestrial biogeochemistry, and atmospheric chemistry and aerosols. An atmospheric chemistry coupled version of MIROC-ESM (MIROC-ESM-CHEM) reasonably reproduces transient variations in surface air temperatures for the period 1850–2005, as well as the present-day climatology for the zonal-mean zonal winds and temperatures from the surface to the mesosphere. The historical evolution and global distribution of column ozone and the amount of tropospheric aerosols are reasonably simulated in the model based on the Representative Concentration Pathways' (RCP) historical emissions of these precursors. The simulated distributions of the terrestrial and marine biogeochemistry parameters agree with recent observations, which is encouraging to use the model for future global change projections.

Description: 3-D thermo-mechanical laboratory modeling of plate-tectonics: modeling scheme, technique and first experiments Solid Earth, 2, 35-51, 2011 Author(s): D. Boutelier and O. Oncken We present an experimental apparatus for 3-D thermo-mechanical analogue modeling of plate tectonic processes such as oceanic and continental subductions, arc-continent or continental collisions. The model lithosphere, made of temperature-sensitive elasto-plastic analogue materials with strain softening, is submitted to a constant temperature gradient causing a strength reduction with depth in each layer. The surface temperature is imposed using infrared emitters, which allows maintaining an unobstructed view of the model surface and the use of a high resolution optical strain monitoring technique (Particle Imaging Velocimetry). Subduction experiments illustrate how the stress conditions on the interplate zone can be estimated using a force sensor attached to the back of the upper plate and adjusted via the density and strength of the subducting lithosphere or the lubrication of the plate boundary. The first experimental results reveal the potential of the experimental set-up to investigate the three-dimensional solid-mechanics interactions of lithospheric plates in multiple natural situations.

Description: Reflection seismic studies over the end-glacial Burträsk fault, Skellefteå, Sweden Solid Earth, 2, 9-16, 2011 Author(s): C. Juhlin and B. Lund Reflection seismic data were acquired along a ca. 22 km long profile over the end-glacial Burträsk fault with a nominal receiver and source spacing of 20 m. A steeply dipping reflection can be correlated to the Burträsk fault, indicating that the fault dips at about 55° to the southeast near the surface. The reflection from the fault is rather poorly imaged, probably due to a lateral offset in the fault of about 1 km at this location and the crookedness of the seismic profile in the vicinity of the fault. A more pronounced steeply dipping reflection is observed about 4 km southeast of the Burträsk fault. Based on its correlation with a topographic low at the surface this reflection is interpreted to originate from a fracture zone. There are no signs of large displacements along this zone as the glacial ice receded, but earthquakes could be associated with it today. Other reflections on the processed seismic section may originate from changes in lithological variations in the supra-crustal rocks or from intrusions of more mafic rock. Constraints on the fault geometry provided by the reflection seismic data will help determine what stresses were required to activate the fault when the major rupture along it occurred ca. 9500 years ago.

Description: A two-layer flow model to represent ice-ocean interactions beneath Antarctic ice shelves Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 65-136, 2011 Author(s): V. Lee, A. J. Payne, and J. M. Gregory We develop a two-dimensional two-layer flow model that can calculate melt rates beneath ice shelves from ocean temperature and salinity fields at the shelf front. The cavity motion is split into two layers where the upper plume layer represents buoyant meltwater-rich water rising along the underside of the ice to the shelf front, while the lower layer represents the ambient water connected to the open ocean circulating beneath the plume. Conservation of momentum has been reduced to a frictional geostrophic balance, which when linearized provides algebraic equations for the plume velocity. The turbulent exchange of heat and salt between the two layers is modelled through an entrainment rate which is directed into the faster flowing layer. The numerical model is tested using an idealized geometry based on the dimensions of Pine Island Ice Shelf. We find that the spatial distribution of melt rates is fairly robust. The rates are at least 2.5 times higher than the mean in fast flowing regions corresponding to the steepest section of the underside of the ice shelf close to the grounding line and to the converged geostrophic flow along the rigid lateral boundary. Precise values depend on a combination of entrainment and plume drag coefficients. The flow of the ambient is slow and the spread of ocean scalar properties is dominated by diffusion.

Description: Modeling and computation of effective emissions: a position paper Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 137-196, 2011 Author(s): R. Paoli, D. Cariolle, and R. Sausen An important issue in the evaluation of the environmental impact of emissions from concentrated sources such as transport modes, is to understand how processes occurring at the scales of exhaust plumes can influence the physical and chemical state of the atmosphere at regional and global scales. Indeed, three-dimensional global circulation models or chemistry transport models generally assume that emissions are instantaneously diluted into large-scale grid boxes, which may lead, for example, to overpredict the efficiency of NO x to produce ozone. In recent times, various methods have been developed to incorporate parameterizations of plume processes into global models that are based either on the correction of the original emissions or on the introduction of subgrid reaction rates in the models. This paper provides a review of the techniques proposed so far in the literature to account for local conversion of emissions in the plume, as well as the implementation of these techniques into atmospheric codes.

Description: The atmospheric chemistry box model CAABA/MECCA-3.0gmdd Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 197-217, 2011 Author(s): R. Sander, A. Baumgaertner, S. Gromov, H. Harder, P. Jöckel, A. Kerkweg, D. Kubistin, E. Regelin, H. Riede, A. Sandu, D. Taraborrelli, H. Tost, and Z.-Q. Xie We present version 3.0gmdd of the atmospheric chemistry box model CAABA/MECCA. In addition to a complete update of the rate coefficients to the most recent recommendations, a number of new features have been added: chemistry in multiple aerosol size bins; automatic multiple simulations reaching steady-state conditions; Monte-Carlo simulations with randomly varied rate coefficients within their experimental uncertainties; calculations along Lagrangian trajectories; mercury chemistry; more detailed isoprene chemistry; tagging of isotopically labeled species. Further changes have been implemented to make the code more user-friendly and to facilitate the analysis of the model results. Like earlier versions, CAABA/MECCA-3.0gmdd is a community model published under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Description: Attribution of ozone changes to dynamical and chemical processes in CCMs and CTMs Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 1-43, 2011 Author(s): H. Garny, V. Grewe, M. Dameris, G. E. Bodeker, and A. Stenke Chemistry-climate models (CCMs) are commonly used to simulate the past and future development of Earth's ozone layer. The fully coupled chemistry schemes calculate the chemical production and destruction of ozone interactively and ozone is transported by the simulated atmospheric flow. Due to the complexity of the processes acting on ozone it is not straightforward to disentangle the influence of individual processes on the temporal development of ozone concentrations. A method is introduced here that quantifies the influence of chemistry and transport on ozone concentration changes and that is easily implemented in CCMs and chemistry-transport models (CTMs). In this method, ozone tendencies (i.e. the time rate of change of ozone) are partitioned into a contribution from ozone production and destruction (chemistry) and a contribution from transport of ozone (dynamics). The influence of transport on ozone in a specific region is further divided into export of ozone out of that region and import of ozone from elsewhere into that region. For this purpose, a diagnostic is used that disaggregates the ozone mixing ratio field into 9 separate fields according to in which of 9 predefined regions of the atmosphere the ozone originated. With this diagnostic the ozone mass fluxes between these regions are obtained. Furthermore, this method is used here to attribute long-term changes in ozone to chemistry and transport. The relative change in ozone from one period to another that is due to changes in production or destruction rates, or due to changes in import or export of ozone, are quantified. As such, the diagnostics introduced here can be used to attribute changes in ozone on monthly, interannual and long-term time-scales to the responsible mechanisms. Results from a CCM simulation are shown here as examples, with the main focus of the paper being on introducing the method.

Description: Some improvements in subbasalt imaging using pre-stack depth migration Solid Earth, 2, 1-7, 2011 Author(s): I. Flecha, R. Carbonell, R. W. Hobbs, and H. Zeyen Subbasalt imaging can be improved by carefully applying pre-stack depth migration. Pre-stack depth migration requires a detailed velocity model and an accurate traveltime calculation. Ray tracing methods are fast but, often fail in calculating traveltimes in complex models, specially, when they feature high velocity contrasts. Finitte difference solutions of the eikonal are more stable and can produce a traveltime field for the whole model avoiding shadow zones. A synthetic test was carried out to check the performance of a new pre-stack depth migration algorithm in a model that features a high velocity layer surrounded by lower velocities. The results reasonably reproduce the original model. The same scheme was used to process long-offset reflection data from the Faroe Shelf where conventional techniques (stack) were insufficient to assess the structure under a basalt layer. Pre-stack depth migration produced an improved image which recovered the main features in the stacked section and allowed to identify some subbasalt coherent events.

Description: A pragmatic approach for the downscaling and bias correction of regional climate simulations – evaluation in hydrological modeling Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 45-63, 2011 Author(s): T. Marke, W. Mauser, A. Pfeiffer, and G. Zängl The present study investigates a statistical approach for the downscaling of climate simulations focusing on those meteorological parameters most commonly required as input for climate change impact models (temperature, precipitation, air humidity and wind speed), including the option to correct biases in the climate model simulations. The approach is evaluated by the utilization of a hydrometeorological model chain consisting of (i) the regional climate model MM5 (driven by reanalysis data at the boundaries of the model domain), (ii) the downscaling and model interface SCALMET, and (iii) the hydrological model PROMET. The results of four hydrological model runs are compared to discharge recordings at the gauge of the Upper Danube Watershed (Central Europe) for the historical period of 1972–2000 on a daily time basis. The comparison reveals that the presented approaches allow for a more accurate simulation of discharge for the catchment of the Upper Danube Watershed and the considered gauge at the outlet in Achleiten. The correction for subgrid-scale variability is shown to reduce biases in simulated discharge compared to the utilization of bilinear interpolation. Further enhancements in model performance could be achieved by a correction of biases in the RCM data within the downscaling process. Although the presented downscaling approach strongly improves the performance of the hydrological model, deviations from the observed discharge conditions persist that are not found when driving the hydrological model with spatially distributed meteorological observations.

Description: iGen: a program for the automated generation of models and parameterisations Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 843-868, 2011 Author(s): D. F. Tang and S. Dobbie Complex physical systems can often be simulated using very high-resolution models but this is not always practical because of computational restrictions. In this case the model must be simplified or parameterised, but this is a notoriously difficult process that often requires the introduction of "model assumptions" that are hard or impossible to justify. Here we introduce a new approach to parameterising models. The approach makes use of a newly developed computer program, which we call iGen, that analyses the source code of a high-resolution model and formally derives a much faster parameterised model that closely approximates the original, reporting bounds on the error introduced by any approximations. These error bounds can be used to formally justify use of the parameterised model in subsequent numerical experiments. Using increasingly complex physical systems as examples we illustrate that iGen has the ability to produce parameterisations that run typically orders of magnitude faster than the underlying, high-resolution models from which they are derived and show that iGen has the potential to become an important tool in model development.

Description: The JGrass-NewAge system for forecasting and managing the hydrological budgets at the basin scale: the models of flow generation, propagation, and aggregation Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 4, 943-969, 2011 Author(s): G. Formetta, R. Mantilla, S. Franceschi, A. Antonello, and R. Rigon This paper presents a discussion of the predictive capacity of the first implementation of the semi-distributed hydrological modeling system JGrass-NewAge. This model focuses on the hydrological balance of medium scale to large scale basins, and considers statistics of the processes at the hillslope scale. The whole modeling system consists of six main parts: (i) estimation of energy balance; (ii) estimation of evapotranspiration; (iii) snow modelling; (iv) estimation of runoff production; (v) aggregation and propagation of flows in channel, and (vi) description of intakes, out-takes, and reservoirs. This paper details the processes, of runoff production, and aggregation/propagation of flows on a river network. The system is based on a hillslope-link geometrical partition of the landscape, so the basic unit, where the budget is evaluated, consists of hillslopes that drain into a single associated link rather than cells or pixels. To this conceptual partition corresponds an implementation of informatics that uses vectorial features for channels, and raster data for hillslopes. Runoff production at each channel link is estimated through a combination of the Duffy (1996) model and a GIUH model for estimating residence times in hillslope. Routing in channels uses equations integrated for any channels' link, and produces discharges at any link end, for any link in the river network. The model has been tested against measured discharges according to some indexes of goodness of fit such as RMSE and Nash Sutcliffe. The characteristic ability to reproduce discharge in any point of the river network is used to infer some statistics, and notably, the scaling properties of the modeled discharge.