References

GMDD

Geoscientific Model Development Discussions

GMDD

1991-962X

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/gmdd-6-685-2013

Numerical issues associated with compensating and competing processes in climate models: an example from ECHAM-HAM

Wan

¹ Rasch

P. J.

¹ Zhang

¹ Kazil

² ³ Leung

L. R.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), Boulder, CO, USA

29 01 2013

6 1 685 720

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

This article is available from http://www.geosci-model-dev-discuss.net/6/685/2013/gmdd-6-685-2013.html

The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.geosci-model-dev-discuss.net/6/685/2013/gmdd-6-685-2013.pdf

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the need for appropriate numerical techniques to represent process interactions in climate models. In two versions of the ECHAM-HAM model, different time integration methods are used to solve the sulfuric acid (H2SO4) gas evolution equation, which lead to substantially different results in the H2SO4 gas concentration and the aerosol nucleation rate. Using convergence tests and sensitivity simulations performed with various time stepping schemes, it is confirmed that numerical errors in the second model version are significantly smaller than those in version one. The use of sequential operator splitting in combination with long time step is identified as the main reason for the large systematic biases in the old model. The remaining errors of nucleation rate in version two, related to the competition between condensation and nucleation, have a clear impact on the simulated concentration of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in the lower troposphere. These errors can be significantly reduced by employing an implicit solver that handles production, condensation and nucleation at the same time. Lessons learned in this work underline the need for more caution when treating multi-time-scale problems involving compensating and competing processes, a common occurrence in current climate models.

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