2004 LOM Workshop

Tuesday 10:00 - 10:20 a.m.

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Preliminary results for the interannual and decadal variability of a new UK coupled climate model

Alex Megann, Adrian New, Shan Sun, Rainer Bleck
Southampton Oceanography Centre
apm@soc.soton.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

The Coupled Hadley-Isopycnic Model Experiment (CHIME) comprises a new coupled model with a hybrid-coordinate ocean component (HYCOM) coupled to the Hadley Centre's HadAM3 atmospheric model. The ocean model is on a global spherical-bipolar grid with resolution 1.25 x 1.25 degrees in the spherical part of the domain, and has the Bering Strait open, while the atmosphere grid resolution is 2.5 degrees N-S and 3.75 degrees E-W. CHIME has the same atmosphere and an identical horizontal grid over most of the ocean model domain as the Hadley Centre's HadCM3 climate model but, with its isopycnal coordinate in the ocean interior, is expected to preserve water masses more faithfully while retaining adequate vertical resolution near the surface. CHIME therefore provides an excellent tool for evaluating the consequences of the choice of vertical coordinate for the ocean component of a coupled model. Preliminary results on the spinup and initial drift of the model will be presented, as well as an analysis of its interannual-decadal variability, which will be compared with corresponding results from HadCM3.

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LOM Users' Workshop, February 9-11, 2004