Process-based evaluation of ENSO simulation sensitivity to horizontal resolution in the Chinese Academy of Sciences FGOALS-f3 Climate System Model

Abstract. El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most prominent interannual climate variability, hence its simulation performance represents a critical benchmark for evaluating the fidelity of coupled climate models. Increasing model resolution is an effective approach to improve the model simulation; however, the impact of refining horizontal resolution from the hundred-kilometer scale to the tens-of-kilometer scale on ENSO simulation, as well as the underlying mechanisms, remains unclear. This study provides a process-based evaluation of ENSO behaviour in two versions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Flexible Global Ocean–Atmosphere–Land System Finite-Volume version 3 (FGOALS-f3) climate system model: a low-resolution configuration (~100 km; FGOALS-f3-L, hereafter f3-L) and a high-resolution configuration (~25 km; FGOALS-f3-H, hereafter f3-H). Using a reproducible diagnostic framework, we assess how horizontal resolution influences ENSO amplitude, oscillation characteristics, key air–sea coupling processes, and high-frequency (HF) atmospheric variability. The low-resolution severely overestimates ENSO amplitude, whereas f3-H produces amplitude closer to the observation. Process-based diagnostics show that this improvement arises from the more realistic representation of thermocline and zonal advection feedback processes in f3-H, which arises from the more realistic representation of the meridional structure of ENSO-related zonal wind stress anomalies over equatorial Pacific in f3-H and can be traced back to its improved horizontal resolution. The ENSO cycle in f3-L exhibits excessive regularity, featuring periodic warm-cold transitions; while f3-H reproduces an irregular oscillation resembling the observation. The excessive regularity in f3-L is attributed to its coarser resolution, which limits the simulation performance of tropical cyclones and consequently weakens high-frequency westerly wind activity over the tropical Pacific. The feeble stochastic forcing in f3-L is insufficient to disrupt its overly intense ENSO cycle, yielding an overly regular oscillation. By identifying the structural sources of ENSO biases across resolutions, this study provides a reproducible and model-agnostic framework for diagnosing resolution effects on ENSO performance in climate models and informs future development of FGOALS-f3 model family.