Time-slices with bias corrected SSTs

Abstract

Accurate, fully-coupled high-resolution atmosphere/ocean simulations are the ultimate goal of climate model developers in both ACME and CESM.  In the short and medium term, however, it is likely that coupled simulations will continue to exhibit significant sea-surface temperature (SST) biases in present day simulations.  These biases can have noticeable negative impacts on features of simulated regional climates, e.g., Atlantic hurricane frequency.  Climate change projections derived from fully-coupled models must be viewed in light of these major biases.  In this poster presentation we present an SST bias correction procedure based on present day coupled runs using CESM.  This procedure is used to generate SST “data” for AMIP-style atmosphere/land simulations.  We validate the procedure by comparing AMIP simulations using observed SSTs with runs using alternate present day SSTs created from coupled model simulations.  We then show results from high-resolution AMIP-style runs for 2070-2099 using bias corrected SSTs and other forcing from an RCP8.5 scenario.