Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

About: Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory is a facility organization based out in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Climate model & Climate change. The organization has 525 authors who have published 2432 publications receiving 264545 citations. The organization is also known as: GFDL.

Dynamical Downscaling Projections of Twenty-First-Century Atlantic Hurricane Activity: CMIP3 and CMIP5 Model-Based Scenarios

Abstract: Twenty-first-century projections of Atlantic climate change are downscaled to explore the robustness of potential changes in hurricane activity. Multimodel ensembles using the phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3)/Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A1B (SRES A1B; late-twenty-first century) and phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5)/representative concentration pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5; early- and late-twenty-first century) scenarios are examined. Ten individual CMIP3 models are downscaled to assess the spread of results among the CMIP3 (but not the CMIP5) models. Downscaling simulations are compared for 18-km grid regional and 50-km grid global models. Storm cases from the regional model are further downscaled into the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) hurricane model (9-km inner grid spacing, with ocean coupling) to simulate intense hurricanes at a finer resolution.A significant reduction in tropical storm frequency is projected for the CMIP3 ...

Stratospheric Sensitivity to Perturbations in Ozone and Carbon Dioxide: Radiative and Dynamical Response.

Abstract: We have attempted to assess the stratospheric effects of two different perturbations: 1) a uniform 50% reduction in ozone; and 2) a uniform doubling of carbon dioxide. The primary studies employ an annual mean insulation version of the recently developed GFDL 40-level general circulation model (GCM). Supporting auxiliary calculations using purely radiative models are also presented. One of these, in which the thermal sensitivity is computed using the assumption that heating by dynamical processes is unaffected by changed composition, gives results which generally are in excellent agreement with those from the GCM. Exceptions to this occur in the ozone reduction experiment at the tropical tropopause and the tropical mesosphere. The predicted response to the ozone reduction is largest at 50 km in the tropics, where the temperature decreases by 25 K; at the tropical tropopause, the decrease is 5 K. The carbon dioxide increase results in a 10 K decrease at 50 km, decreasing to zero at the tropopause....

On the Ocean’s Large-Scale Circulation near the Limit of No Vertical Mixing

Abstract: By convention, the ocean’s large-scale circulation is assumed to be a thermohaline overturning driven by the addition and extraction of buoyancy at the surface and vertical mixing in the interior. Previous work suggests that the overturning should die out as vertical mixing rates are reduced to zero. In this paper, a formal energy analysis is applied to a series of ocean general circulation models to evaluate changes in the large-scale circulation over a range of vertical mixing rates. Two different model configurations are used. One has an open zonal channel and an Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). The other configuration does not. The authors find that a vigorous large-scale circulation persists at the limit of no mixing in the model with a wind-driven ACC. A wind-powered overturning circulation linked to the ACC can exist without vertical mixing and without much energy input from surface buoyancy forces.

Evaluation of cloud and water vapor simulations in CMIP5 climate models using NASA “A-Train” satellite observations

Abstract: [1] Using NASA's A-Train satellite measurements, we evaluate the accuracy of cloud water content (CWC) and water vapor mixing ratio (H2O) outputs from 19 climate models submitted to the Phase 5 of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), and assess improvements relative to their counterparts for the earlier CMIP3. We find more than half of the models show improvements from CMIP3 to CMIP5 in simulating column-integrated cloud amount, while changes in water vapor simulation are insignificant. For the 19 CMIP5 models, the model spreads and their differences from the observations are larger in the upper troposphere (UT) than in the lower or middle troposphere (L/MT). The modeled mean CWCs over tropical oceans range from ~3% to ~15× of the observations in the UT and 40% to 2× of the observations in the L/MT. For modeled H2Os, the mean values over tropical oceans range from ~1% to 2× of the observations in the UT and within 10% of the observations in the L/MT. The spatial distributions of clouds at 215 hPa are relatively well-correlated with observations, noticeably better than those for the L/MT clouds. Although both water vapor and clouds are better simulated in the L/MT than in the UT, there is no apparent correlation between the model biases in clouds and water vapor. Numerical scores are used to compare different model performances in regards to spatial mean, variance and distribution of CWC and H2O over tropical oceans. Model performances at each pressure level are ranked according to the average of all the relevant scores for that level. © 2012. American Geophysical Union.

Planetary Circulations: 1. Barotropic Representation of Jovian and Terrestrial Turbulence

Abstract: We seek the formative processes of the planetary circulations of Jupiter and Saturn. The study concentrates on examining whether processes known to control the terrestrial circulation, namely, two-dimensional turbulence and baroclinic instability, can produce Jovian circulations under Jovian conditions. The first numerical model involves a spherical barotropic vorticity equation subjected to a stochastic representation of baroclinic processes. The resulting solutions suggest that a strong affinity exists between the Jovian and terrestrial circulations. This leads to a reevaluation of terrestrial circulation theory from the broader perspective of parameter space. The solutions in the Jovian regime support the hypothesis that a variation of the Rhines effect—an interaction of the two-dimensional turbulence cascade and Rossby wave propagation—creates the pseudoaxisymmetry and scale Lβ=π(2U/β)½ of the bands (U is the rms zonal velocity, and β the northward gradient of the Coriolis force). The anisotr...