NCAR Resarch Data Archive logo

CESM1 CAM5 BGC Medium Ensemble

d651000
| DOI: 10.5065/R056-8M70
 
Abstract:

There is growing evidence that the role internal variability plays in our confidence in future climate projections has been under-appreciated in past assessments of model projections for the coming decades. In light of this, a 15 member ensemble has been produced to complement the existing 30 member "Large Ensemble" conducted with the Community Earth System Model (CESM). In contrast to the Large Ensemble, which explored the variability in RCP8.5, our new ensemble uses the moderate mitigation scenario represented by RCP4.5. By comparing outputs from these two ensembles, we assess at what point in the future the climates conditioned on the two scenarios will begin to significantly diverge. We find in general that while internal variability is a significant component of uncertainty for periods before 2050, there is evidence of a significantly increased risk of extreme warm events in some regions as early as 2030 in RCP8.5 relative to RCP4.5. Furthermore, the period 2061-2080 sees largely separate joint distributions of annual mean temperature and precipitation in most regions for the two ensembles. Hence, in the CESM's representation of the Earth System for the latter portion of the 21st century, the range of climatic states which might be expected in the RCP8.5 scenario is significantly and detectably further removed from today's climate state than the RCP4.5 scenario even in the presence of internal variability.

Temporal Range:
2006-01 to 2080-12
Variables:
Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar)
Data Types:
Grid
Data Contributors:
UCAR/NCAR/CGD
Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Publications:
Sanderson, B. M., Oleson, K. W., Strand, W. G. et al., 2018: A new ensemble of GCM simulations to assess avoided impacts in a climate mitigation scenario. Climatic Change, 146, 303-318.
Total Volume:
64.84 TB (Entire dataset) Volume details by dataset product
Data Formats:
HDF5/NetCDF4
Metadata Record:
Data License:
Citation counts are compiled through information provided by publicly-accessible APIs according to the guidelines developed through the https://makedatacount.org/ project. If journals do not provide citation information to these publicly-accessible services, then this citation information will not be included in RDA citation counts. Additionally citations that include dataset DOIs are the only types included in these counts, so legacy citations without DOIs, references found in publication acknowledgements, or references to a related publication that describes a dataset will not be included in these counts.