CLIMBER-2: a climate system model of intermediate complexity. Part II: model sensitivity |
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Authors: | A Ganopolski V Petoukhov S Rahmstorf V Brovkin M Claussen A Eliseev C Kubatzki |
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Institution: | (1) Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, P.O. Box 601203, 14412 Potsdam, Germany E-mail: andrey@pik-potsdam.de, DE;(2) A.M. Obukhov Institute for Atmospheric Physics, Pyzhevsky 3, 109017 Moscow, Russia, RU |
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Abstract: | A set of sensitivity experiments with the climate system model of intermediate complexity CLIMBER-2 was performed to compare
its sensitivity to changes in different types of forcings and boundary conditions with the results of comprehensive models
(GCMs). We investigated the climate system response to changes in freshwater flux into the Northern Atlantic, CO2 concentration, solar insolation, and vegetation cover in the boreal zone and in the tropics. All these experiments were compared
with the results of corresponding experiments performed with different GCMs. Qualitative, and in many respects, quantitative
agreement between the results of CLIMBER-2 and GCMs demonstrate the ability of our climate system model of intermediate complexity
to address diverse aspects of the climate change problem. In addition, we used our model for a series of experiments to assess
the impact of some climate feedbacks and uncertainties in model parameters on the model sensitivity to different forcings.
We studied the role of freshwater feedback and vertical ocean diffusivity for the stability properties of the thermohaline
ocean circulation. We show that freshwater feedback plays a minor role, while changes of vertical diffusivity in the ocean
considerably affect the circulation stability. In global warming experiments we analysed the impact of hydrological sensitivity
and vertical diffusivity on the long-term evolution of the thermohaline circulation. In the boreal and tropical deforestation
experiments we assessed the role of an interactive ocean and showed that for both types of deforestation scenarios, an interactive
ocean leads to an additional cooling due to albedo and water vapour feedbacks.
Received: 28 May 2000 / Accepted: 9 November 2000 |
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