HR: 0830h
AN: A41E-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Ocean Heat Content: Reconciling observations and Climate Models.
AU: * AchutaRao, K M
EM: achutarao1@llnl.gov
AF: Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, L-103, P.O. Box 808, Livermore, CA 94550 United States
AU: Gleckler, P
EM: gleckler1@llnl.gov
AF: Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, L-103, P.O. Box 808, Livermore, CA 94550 United States
AU: Santer, B
EM: santer1@llnl.gov
AF: Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, L-103, P.O. Box 808, Livermore, CA 94550 United States
AU: Pierce, D
EM: dpierce@ucsd.edu
AF: Climate Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Mail Stop 0224, La Jolla, CA 92093-0224 United States
AU: Barnett, T
EM: tbarnett-ul@ucsd.edu
AF: Climate Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Mail Stop 0224, La Jolla, CA 92093-0224 United States
AB: Since Levitus [Science, 2000] reported increases in observed Ocean Heat Content between the 1950s-1990s, numerous studies (e.g., Barnett et al.[Science 2001], Levitus et al. [Science, 2001], and Reichert et al. [GRL,2002]) have carried out climate change detection studies comparing model simulated changes in ocean heat content to observations. While these studies confirm that the increasing trend in ocean heat content is due to anthropogenic sources, they have not shown variability in the interannual to decadal time-scales that the observations indicate. This has naturally led to questions about the fidelity of models in being able to simulate natural variability. Recent work by Gregory et al [GRL, 2004] suggests that sparse, time-varying data coverage in several ocean basins is a possible source of apparent disagreement between one coupled climate model and observations. Recently, a new and updated version of the World Ocean Heat Content which extends the time series to more recent years has been released by Levitus et al. [GRL, 2005]. In this study, we analyze the shortcomings of the observations and show the effects of data coverage on variability using a suite of coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP2+). We will address possible implications for climate model diagnosis and for climate change detection studies with simulations of 20th Century warming using state-of-the-art IPCC class models.
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE (New category)
DE: 1635 Oceans (4203)
DE: 4215 Climate and interannual variability (3309)
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly