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- Title
How Well Do Coupled Models Simulate Today's Climate?
- Authors
Reichler, Thomas; Junsu Kim
- Abstract
Information about climate and how it responds to increased greenhouse gas concentrations depends heavily on insight gained from numerical simulations by coupled climate models. The confidence placed in quantitative estimates of the rate and magnitude of future climate change is therefore strongly related to the quality of these models. In this study, we test the realism of several generations of coupled climate models, including those used for the 1995, 2001, and 2007 reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). By validating against observations of present climate, we show that the coupled models have been steadily improving over time and that the best models are converging toward a level of accuracy that is similar to observation-based analyses of the atmosphere.
- Subjects
GREENHOUSE gases; ATMOSPHERE; CLIMATE change; GLOBAL temperature changes; CLIMATOLOGY; SIMULATION methods &; models; MODELS &; modelmaking; INTERGOVERNMENTAL Panel on Climate Change
- Publication
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2008, Vol 89, Issue 3, p303
- ISSN
0003-0007
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1175/BAMS-89-3-303