Climate models without pre-industrial volcanic forcing underestimate historical ocean thermal expansion

Gregory, J. M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1296-8644, Bi, D., Collier, M. A., Dix, M. R., Hirst, A. C., Hu, A., Huber, M., Knutti, R., Marsland, S. J., Meinshausen, M., Rashid, H. A., Rotstayn, L. D., Schurer, A. and Church, J. A. (2013) Climate models without pre-industrial volcanic forcing underestimate historical ocean thermal expansion. Geophysical Research Letters, 40 (8). pp. 1600-1604. ISSN 0094-8276 doi: 10.1002/grl.50339

Abstract/Summary

Episodic explosive volcanic eruptions are a natural part of the climate system but are often omitted from atmosphere-ocean general circulation model (AOGCM) preindustrial spin-up and control experiments. This omission imposes a negative bias on ocean heat uptake in simulations of the historical period. In models of a range of complexity, we find that global-mean sea level rise due to thermal expansion during the last ∼ 150 years is consequently underestimated by 5–30 mm, which is a substantial proportion of the model mean of 50 mm in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 AOGCMs with anthropogenic forcing only, and is therefore important in accounting for 20th century sea level rise. We test and recommend a procedure for removing the bias.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/38331
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > NCAS
Uncontrolled Keywords	volcano; ocean heat content; climate change; sea level rise
Publisher	American Geophysical Union
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