The January Global Climate Simulated by a Two-Level General Circulation Model: A Comparison with Observation

作者：W. Lawrence Gates · 发表于：Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences · 年份：1975 · DOI：10.1175/1520-0469(1975)032<0449:tjgcsb>2.0.co;2 · 被引用次数：16 · 研究领域：Climate variability and models、Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations、Atmospheric aerosols and clouds

The mean global distributions of pressure, temperature, wind, moisture, cloudiness, precipitation, evaporation, and surface heat balance simulated for January by the two-level Mintz-Arakawa atmospheric general circulation model are compared with the corresponding observed fields. Although there are a number of shortcomings, in general the large-scale distribution of global climate is reasonably well portrayed by the model, in spite of its limited vertical resolution. The model simulates the semi-permanent cyclones and anticyclones of both the tropics and higher latitudes in approximately their correct positions, together with the associated large-scale temperature and circulation fields of the middle and lower troposphere. In comparison with models of greater resolution, these results suggest that with further selective improvements in the physical parameterizations, relatively coarse global models (of correspondingly lower computational demands) are useful tools in the study of many aspects of climate. The most prominent errors of the present model simulations are in the portrayal of processes related to the transfer of moisture. The simulated cloudiness is about half that observed (in the Northern Hemisphere), and the average precipitation rate is about twice that observed and extends over too broad a zone in the tropics. The cloudiness error is evidently due to the model's production of clouds only during precipitation, and its failure to simulate nonprecipitating cloudine...