Atmospheric Tides in the Latest Generation of Climate Models
Name
Covey-2014-Atmospheric Tides in.pdf
Size
1.73 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
1da02edccfe8806bffc316b1bf9fcd19
Author(s)
Covey, Curt
Dai, Aiguo
Marsh, Daniel R.
Lindzen, Richard Siegmund
Date Issued
June 2014
Journal
Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
Publisher
American Meteorological Society
Citation
Covey, Curt, Aiguo Dai, Richard S. Lindzen, and Daniel R. Marsh. “Atmospheric Tides in the Latest Generation of Climate Models.” J. Atmos. Sci. 71, no. 6 (June 2014): 1905–1913. © 2014 American Meteorological Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
For atmospheric tides driven by solar heating, the database of climate model output used in the most recent assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms and extends the authors’ earlier results based on the previous generation of models. Both the present study and the earlier one examine the surface pressure signature of the tides, but the new database removes a shortcoming of the earlier study in which model simulations were not strictly comparable to observations. The present study confirms an approximate consistency among observations and all model simulations, despite variation of model tops from 31 to 144 km. On its face, this result is surprising because the dominant (semidiurnal) component of the tides is forced mostly by ozone heating around 30–70-km altitude. Classical linear tide calculations and occasional numerical experimentation have long suggested that models with low tops achieve some consistency with observations by means of compensating errors, with wave reflection from the model top making up for reduced ozone forcing. Future work with the new database may confirm this hypothesis by additional classical calculations and analyses of the ozone heating profiles and wave reflection in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) models. The new generation of models also extends CMIP's purview to free-atmosphere fields including the middle atmosphere and above.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1175/jas-d-13-0358.1
