Improved Climate Simulation by MIROC5: Mean States, Variability, and Climate Sensitivity

TLDR

MIROC5 is a newly developed version of the Japanese MIROC atmosphere–ocean general circulation model. The authors ran a century‑long control experiment at T85 atmospheric and 1° ocean resolution, comparing MIROC5’s climatological mean state and variability to observations and to earlier MIROC3.2 runs at coarser and finer resolutions. MIROC5 shows overall improved climatology, with better precipitation, atmospheric and equatorial ocean fields, and ENSO simulation, and a lower equilibrium climate sensitivity of 2.6 K due to stronger low‑cloud negative feedback, while cloud properties agree well with satellite data.

Abstract

Abstract A new version of the atmosphere–ocean general circulation model cooperatively produced by the Japanese research community, known as the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate (MIROC), has recently been developed. A century-long control experiment was performed using the new version (MIROC5) with the standard resolution of the T85 atmosphere and 1° ocean models. The climatological mean state and variability are then compared with observations and those in a previous version (MIROC3.2) with two different resolutions (medres, hires), coarser and finer than the resolution of MIROC5. A few aspects of the mean fields in MIROC5 are similar to or slightly worse than MIROC3.2, but otherwise the climatological features are considerably better. In particular, improvements are found in precipitation, zonal mean atmospheric fields, equatorial ocean subsurface fields, and the simulation of El Niño–Southern Oscillation. The difference between MIROC5 and the previous model is larger than that between the two MIROC3.2 versions, indicating a greater effect of updating parameterization schemes on the model climate than increasing the model resolution. The mean cloud property obtained from the sophisticated prognostic schemes in MIROC5 shows good agreement with satellite measurements. MIROC5 reveals an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 2.6 K, which is lower than that in MIROC3.2 by 1 K. This is probably due to the negative feedback of low clouds to the increasing concentration of CO2, which is opposite to that in MIROC3.2.