The Green's function model intercomparison project (GFMIP) protocol

Bloch-Johnson, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8465-5383, Rugenstein, M. A. A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4541-3277, Alessi, M. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5400-008X, Proistosescu, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1717-124X, Zhao, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4996-7821, Zhang, B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0334-7128, Williams, A. I. L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5457-5075, Gregory, J. M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1296-8644, Cole, J., Dong, Y. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6404-3446, Duffy, M. L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2206-2424, Kang, S. M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4635-275X and Zhou, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3529-4283 (2024) The Green's function model intercomparison project (GFMIP) protocol. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 16 (2). e2023MS003700. ISSN 1942-2466 doi: 10.1029/2023ms003700

Abstract/Summary

The atmospheric Green's function method is a technique for modeling the response of the atmosphere to changes in the spatial field of surface temperature. While early studies applied this method to changes in atmospheric circulation, it has also become an important tool to understand changes in radiative feedbacks due to evolving patterns of warming, a phenomenon called the “pattern effect.” To better study this method, this paper presents a protocol for creating atmospheric Green's functions to serve as the basis for a model intercomparison project, GFMIP. The protocol has been developed using a series of sensitivity tests performed with the HadAM3 atmosphere‐only general circulation model, along with existing and new simulations from other models. Our preliminary results have uncovered nonlinearities in the response of the atmosphere to surface temperature changes, including an asymmetrical response to warming versus cooling patch perturbations, and a change in the dependence of the response on the magnitude and size of the patches. These nonlinearities suggest that the pattern effect may depend on the heterogeneity of warming as well as its location. These experiments have also revealed tradeoffs in experimental design between patch size, perturbation strength, and the length of control and patch simulations. The protocol chosen on the basis of these experiments balances scientific utility with the simulation time and setup required by the Green's function approach. Running these simulations will further our understanding of many aspects of atmospheric response, from the pattern effect and radiative feedbacks to changes in circulation, cloudiness, and precipitation.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/115194
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Uncontrolled Keywords	General Earth and Planetary Sciences, Environmental Chemistry, Global and Planetary Change
Publisher	American Geophysical Union (AGU)
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