A seasonal zonal energy balance climate model with an interactive lower layer

作者：Starley L. Thompson, Stephen H. Schneider · 发表于：Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres · 年份：1979 · DOI：10.1029/jc084ic05p02401 · 被引用次数：88 · 研究领域：Climate variability and models、Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics、Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations

The mean annual energy balance climate model of Gal‐Chen and Schneider (1976) is expanded to a more general model which includes an interactive lower layer. The two‐layer model is used to simulate the seasonal cycle through the use of seasonally varying insolation. Rather than greatly modifying the zonal model parameterizations, we choose to determine the extent to which the use of the present parameterizations in a completely zonally averaged model can reasonably simulate the seasonal cycle of surface air temperature and meridional heat transport. It is found that the model‐derived cycle of surface air temperature lags the observations by 1–2 months, but the amplitude of the seasonal cycle can be well simulated by using reasonable annual mean values of the seasonally effective zonal thermal inertia. The seasonal variations in the meridional transport of energy by the atmosphere agree qualitatively in mid‐latitudes with the data of Oort (1971), but they suffer from large errors in the tropics. Seasonal simulation indicates that the diffusive atmospheric energy transport parameterization based on annual data is inappropriate in this region. Comparisons of annual and seasonal models show that there is little difference in temperature sensitivity for solar constant changes. Unlike previous low‐resolution climate models the seasonally effective thermal inertia is also allowed to vary with time to simulate the seasonal variation of the oceanic mixed layer depth. This modification ...