The Met Office Global Coupled model 2.0 (GC2) configuration

Williams, K. D., Harris, C. M., Bodas-Salcedo, A., Camp, J., Comer, R. E., Copsey, D., Fereday, D., Graham, T., Hill, R., Hinton, T., Hyder, P., Ineson, S., Masato, G., Milton, S. F., Roberts, M. J., Rowell, D. P., Sanchez, C., Shelly, A., Sinha, B., Walters, D. N., West, A., Woollings, T. and Xavier, P. K. (2015) The Met Office Global Coupled model 2.0 (GC2) configuration. Geoscientific Model Development, 8 (5). pp. 1509-1524. ISSN 1991-9603 doi: 10.5194/gmd-8-1509-2015

Abstract/Summary

The latest coupled configuration of the Met Office Unified Model (Global Coupled configuration 2, GC2) is presented. This paper documents the model components which make up the configuration (although the scientific description of these components is detailed elsewhere) and provides a description of the coupling between the components. The performance of GC2 in terms of its systematic errors is assessed using a variety of diagnostic techniques. The configuration is intended to be used by the Met Office and collaborating institutes across a range of timescales, with the seasonal forecast system (GloSea5) and climate projection system (HadGEM) being the initial users. In this paper GC2 is compared against the model currently used operationally in those two systems. Overall GC2 is shown to be an improvement on the configurations used currently, particularly in terms of modes of variability (e.g. mid-latitude and tropical cyclone intensities, the Madden–Julian Oscillation and El Niño Southern Oscillation). A number of outstanding errors are identified with the most significant being a considerable warm bias over the Southern Ocean and a dry precipitation bias in the Indian and West African summer monsoons. Research to address these is ongoing.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/42416
Identification Number/DOI	10.5194/gmd-8-1509-2015
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	European Geosciences Union
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