We examine tropical rainfall from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory's Atmosphere Model version 4 (GFDL AM4) at three horizontal resolutions of 100 km, 50 km, and 25 km. The model produces more intense rainfall at finer resolutions, but a large discrepancy still exists between the simulated and the observed frequency distribution. We use a theoretical precipitation scaling diagnostic to examine the frequency distribution of the simulated rainfall. The scaling accurately produces the frequency distribution at moderate-to-high intensity (≥10 mm day⁻¹). Intense tropical rainfall at finer resolutions is produced primarily from the increased contribution of resolved precipitation and enhanced updrafts. The model becomes more sensitive to the grid-scale updrafts than local thermodynamics at high rain rates as the contribution from the resolved precipitation increases.

As the community increases climate model horizontal resolutions and experiments with removing moist convective parameterizations entirely, it is imperative to understand how these advances affect the InterTropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). We investigate how the ITCZ responds to deactivating parameterized convection at two resolutions, 50 and 6 km, in fixed sea surface temperature, aquaplanet simulations with the NOAA GFDL AM4 atmospheric model. Disabling parameterized convection at 50 km resolution narrows the ITCZ and increases its precipitation minus evaporation (P–E) maximum by ∼78%, whereas at 6 km resolution doing so widens the ITCZ and decreases its P–E maximum by ∼50%. Using the column-integrated moist static energy budget, we decompose these tropical P–E responses into contributions from changes in atmospheric energy input (AEI), gross moist stability, and gross moisture stratification. At 6 km, the ITCZ weakens due to increased gross moist stability. Disabling the convective parameterization at this finer resolution deepens the circulation, favoring more efficient poleward energy transport out of the deep tropics and reduced precipitation in the core of the ITCZ. Conversely, at 50 km the ITCZ strengthening is primarily driven by AEI, which in turn stems primarily from increased low cloud amount and thus longwave cloud radiative cooling in the Hadley cell subsiding branch. The Hadley circulation overturning intensifies to produce poleward energy fluxes that compensate the longwave cooling, yielding a stronger ITCZ. We further show that the low level diabatic heating profiles over the descending region are instrumental in understanding such diverse responses.

We performed a series of aquaplanet simulations at the horizontal resolution from 50km to 6km with identical parameterization settings using the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory’s Atmosphere Model version 4 implemented with the two-moment Morrison-Gettelman cloud microphysics with prognostic precipitation (GFDL AM4-MG2). At the finer resolution, the global mean resolved-scale precipitation increases and that from cumulus parameterization decreases. The model also simulates less/thinner clouds over the low latitudes and more/thicker clouds over the high latitudes as the resolution increases. The precipitation over the deep tropics is investigated in detail. We find little resolution sensitivity in the daily mean precipitation extremes. Changes of the equatorial resolved precipitation with resolution cannot be fully explained by the resolution dependence in the vertical velocity amplitude. We report a robust sensitivity in the convective organization over the deep tropics to the model resolution. In simulations of finer resolution, the localized convection is suppressed, and the organized convective system associated with large-scale circulations becomes more prominent.

The observed stratospheric quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) and the tropospheric Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) are strongly connected in boreal winter, with stronger MJO activity when lower-stratospheric winds are easterly. However, the current generation of climate models with internally generated representations of the QBO and MJO do not simulate the observed QBO-MJO connection, for reasons that remain unclear. This study builds on prior work exploring the QBO-MJO link in climate models whose stratospheric winds are relaxed toward reanalysis, reducing stratospheric biases in the model and imposing a realistic QBO. A series of ensemble experiments are performed using four state-of-the-art climate models capable of representing the MJO over the period 1980–2015, each with similar nudging in the stratosphere. In these four models, nudging leads to a good representation of QBO wind and temperature signals, however no model simulates the observed QBO-MJO relationship. Biases in MJO vertical structure and cloud-radiative feedbacks are investigated, but no conclusive model bias or mechanism is identified that explains the lack of a QBO-MJO connection.

The stratosphere can be a source of predictability for surface weather on timescales of several weeks to months. However, the potential predictive skill gained from stratospheric variability can be limited by biases in the representation of stratospheric processes and the coupling of the stratosphere with surface climate in forecast systems. This study provides a first systematic identification of model biases in the stratosphere across a wide range of subseasonal forecast systems.

It is found that many of the forecast systems considered exhibit warm global-mean temperature biases from the lower to middle stratosphere, too strong/cold wintertime polar vortices, and too cold extratropical upper-troposphere/lower-stratosphere regions. Furthermore, tropical stratospheric anomalies associated with the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation tend to decay toward each system's climatology with lead time. In the Northern Hemisphere (NH), most systems do not capture the seasonal cycle of extreme-vortex-event probabilities, with an underestimation of sudden stratospheric warming events and an overestimation of strong vortex events in January. In the Southern Hemisphere (SH), springtime interannual variability in the polar vortex is generally underestimated, but the timing of the final breakdown of the polar vortex often happens too early in many of the prediction systems.

These stratospheric biases tend to be considerably worse in systems with lower model lid heights. In both hemispheres, most systems with low-top atmospheric models also consistently underestimate the upward wave driving that affects the strength of the stratospheric polar vortex. We expect that the biases identified here will help guide model development for subseasonal-to-seasonal forecast systems and further our understanding of the role of the stratosphere in predictive skill in the troposphere.

We investigate the dependence of radiative feedback on the pattern of sea-surface temperature (SST) change in 14 Atmospheric General Circulation Models (AGCMs) forced with observed variations in SST and sea-ice over the historical record from 1871 to near-present. We find that over 1871–1980, the Earth warmed with feedbacks largely consistent and strongly correlated with long-term climate sensitivity feedbacks (diagnosed from corresponding atmosphere-ocean GCM abrupt-4xCO2 simulations). Post 1980, however, the Earth warmed with unusual trends in tropical Pacific SSTs (enhanced warming in the west, cooling in the east) and cooling in the Southern Ocean that drove climate feedback to be uncorrelated with—and indicating much lower climate sensitivity than—that expected for long-term CO₂ increase. We show that these conclusions are not strongly dependent on the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) II SST data set used to force the AGCMs, though the magnitude of feedback post 1980 is generally smaller in nine AGCMs forced with alternative HadISST1 SST boundary conditions. We quantify a “pattern effect” (defined as the difference between historical and long-term CO₂ feedback) equal to 0.48 ± 0.47 [5%–95%] W m⁻² K⁻¹ for the time-period 1871–2010 when the AGCMs are forced with HadISST1 SSTs, or 0.70 ± 0.47 [5%–95%] W m⁻² K⁻¹ when forced with AMIP II SSTs. Assessed changes in the Earth's historical energy budget agree with the AGCM feedback estimates. Furthermore satellite observations of changes in top-of-atmosphere radiative fluxes since 1985 suggest that the pattern effect was particularly strong over recent decades but may be waning post 2014.

Using nine chemistry-climate and eight associated no-chemistry models, we investigate the persistence and timing of cold episodes occurring in the Arctic and Antarctic stratosphere during the period 1980–2014. We find systematic differences in behavior between members of these model pairs. In a first group of chemistry models whose dynamical configurations mirror their no-chemistry counterparts, we find an increased persistence of such cold polar vortices, such that these cold episodes often start earlier and last longer, relative to the times of occurrence of the lowest temperatures. Also the date of occurrence of the lowest temperatures, both in the Arctic and the Antarctic, is often delayed by 1–3 weeks in chemistry models, versus their no-chemistry counterparts. This behavior exacerbates a widespread problem occurring in most or all models, a delayed occurrence, in the median, of the most anomalously cold day during such cold winters. In a second group of model pairs there are differences beyond just ozone chemistry. In particular, here the chemistry models feature more levels in the stratosphere, a raised model top, and differences in non-orographic gravity wave drag versus their no-chemistry counterparts. Such additional dynamical differences can completely mask the above influence of ozone chemistry. The results point toward a need to retune chemistry-climate models versus their no-chemistry counterparts.

Because the forcings to which Coupled Model Intercomparison Project - Phase 5 (CMIP5) models were subjected were poorly quantified, recent efforts from the Radiative Forcing Model Intercomparison Project (RFMIP) have focused on developing and testing models with exacting benchmarks. Here, we focus on aerosol forcing to understand if for a given distribution of aerosols, participating models are producing a radiometrically-accurate forcing. We apply the RFMIP experimental protocol for assessing flux biases in aerosol instantaneous radiative effect (IRE) on two participating models, GFDL AM4 and CESM 1.2.2. The latter model contains the RRTMG radiation code which is widely used among CMIP6 GCM's. We conduct a series of calculations that test different potential sources of error in these models relative to line-by-line benchmarks. We find two primary sources of error: two-stream solution methods and the techniques to resolve spectral dependencies of absorption and scattering across the solar spectrum. The former is the dominant source of error for both models but the latter is more significant as a contributing factor for CESM 1.2.2. Either source of error can be addressed in future model development, and these results both demonstrate how the RFMIP protocol can help determine the origins of parameterized errors relative to their equivalent benchmark calculations for participating models, as well as highlight a viable path towards a more rigorous quantification and control of forcings for future CMIP exercises.

An unprecedented disruption of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) started to develop from late 2015. The early development of this event is analyzed using the space-time spectra of eddies from reanalysis data. While the extratropical waves propagating horizontally into the tropics were assumed to be the main driver for the disruption, it was not clear why these waves dissipated near the jet core instead of jet edge as linear theory predicts. This study shows that the drastic deceleration of the equatorial jet was largely brought about by a single strong wave packet, and the local winds experienced by the wave packet served as a better indicator of the wave breaking latitude than the zonal mean winds.

Surprisingly, tropical mixed Rossby gravity waves also made an appreciable contribution to the deceleration of the equatorial westerly jet by the horizontal eddy momentum fluxes, especially before January 2016. The horizontal eddy momentum fluxes associated with the tropical waves arise from the deformation of the wave structure when background westerlies increase with height. These horizontal eddy momentum anomalies from the tropical waves are commonly observed in the reanalysis data, but are typically much weaker than those in the 2015/2016 winter. The possibility exists that exceptionally strong equatorially trapped waves precondition the flow to disruption by an extratropical disturbance.