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Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1613
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1613
21 Jul 2023
 | 21 Jul 2023

Strong aerosol cooling alone does not explain cold-biased mid-century temperatures in CMIP6 models

Clare Marie Flynn, Linnea Huusko, Angshuman Modak, and Thorsten Mauritsen

Abstract. The current generation of global climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) exhibits a surprisingly cold-biased ensemble-mean mid-20th century global-mean surface temperature anomaly, compared to the previous generation Phase 5 (CMIP5) and to the observed mid-century temperature anomaly. Most CMIP6 models, 31 of 36 models in contrast to 17 of 27 CMIP5 models, are colder than the uncertainty range of the observed anomaly, indicating that the CMIP6 suppressed warming is not caused by a few cold models. However, no clear cause that sufficiently explains the tendency towards suppressed mid-20th century warming emerges. Whereas models that best match observations exclusively exhibit weaker aerosol forcing than that exhibited by colder models, there is not a clear relationship between mid-century temperatures and aerosol forcing. Likewise, no systematic differences emerge among other model aerosol representations, such as inclusion of aerosol-cloud interactions for ice clouds in the model or the type of aerosol model input data set used, nor variations in greenhouse gas forcing or climate sensitivity, that could explain the suppressed warming. This indicates the presence of another cause, or more likely a set of causes, of the suppressed warming in many CMIP6 models. Thus, the prospects of a strong constraint on present-day aerosol forcing based on the mid-century warming is weakened, even if it is encouraging that those models that do match the observed warming best all have relatively weak aerosol forcing.

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Journal article(s) based on this preprint

07 Dec 2023
Strong aerosol cooling alone does not explain cold-biased mid-century temperatures in CMIP6 models
Clare Marie Flynn, Linnea Huusko, Angshuman Modak, and Thorsten Mauritsen
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 15121–15133, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15121-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15121-2023, 2023
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The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.

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The latest-generation climate models show surprisingly cold mid-20th century global-mean...
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