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Refining multi-model projections of temperature extremes by evaluation against land–atmosphere coupling diagnostics

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Sippel,  Sebastian
Empirical Inference of the Earth System, Dr. Miguel D. Mahecha, Department Biogeochemical Integration, Dr. M. Reichstein, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Max Planck Society;
IMPRS International Max Planck Research School for Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Max Planck Society;

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Mahecha,  Miguel D.
Empirical Inference of the Earth System, Dr. Miguel D. Mahecha, Department Biogeochemical Integration, Dr. M. Reichstein, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Max Planck Society;

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Reichstein,  Markus
Department Biogeochemical Integration, Dr. M. Reichstein, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Sippel, S., Zscheischler, J., Mahecha, M. D., Orth, R., Reichstein, M., Vogel, M., et al. (2017). Refining multi-model projections of temperature extremes by evaluation against land–atmosphere coupling diagnostics. Earth System Dynamics, 8(2), 387-403. doi:10.5194/esd-8-387-2017.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002B-B083-5
Abstract
The Earth’s land surface and the atmosphere are strongly interlinked through the exchange of energy and matter (e.g. water and carbon). This coupled behaviour causes various land-atmosphere feedbacks and an insufficient understanding of these feedbacks contributes to uncertain global climate model projections. For example, a crucial role of the land surface in exacerbating summer heat waves in mid-latitude regions has been identified empirically for high-impact heatwaves, but individual 5 climate models differ widely in their respective representation of land-atmosphere coupling. Here, we combine an ensemble of observations-based and simulated temperature (T) and evapotranspiration (ET) datasets and investigate coincidences of T anomalies with ET anomalies as a proxy for land-atmosphere interactions during periods of anomalously warm temperatures. We demonstrate that a relatively large fraction of state-of-the-art climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) archive produces systematically too frequent coincidences of high T anomalies with negative 10 ET anomalies in mid-latitude regions during the warm season and in several tropical regions year-round. Further, we show that these coincidences (high T, low ET), as diagnosed by the land-coupling coincidence metrics, are closely related to the variability and extremes of simulated temperatures across a multi-model ensemble. Thus, our approach offers a physically consistent, diagnostic-based avenue to evaluate these ensembles, and subsequently reduce model biases in simulated and predicted extreme temperatures. Following this idea, we derive a land-coupling constraint based on the spread of 54 combinations of 15 T-ET benchmarking datasets and consequently retain only a subset of CMIP5 models that produce a land-coupling behaviour that is compatible with these observations-based benchmark estimates. The constrained multi-model projections exhibit lower temperature extremes in regions where models show substantial spread in T-ET coupling, and in addition, biases in the climate model ensemble are consistently reduced.