Identification

Title

Key factors governing uncertainty in the response to sunshade geoengineering from a comparison of the GeoMIP ensemble and a perturbed parameter ensemble

Abstract

Climate model studies of the consequences of solar geoengineering are central to evaluating whether such approaches may help to reduce the harmful impacts of global warming. In this study we compare the sunshade solar geoengineering response of a perturbed parameter ensemble (PPE) of the Hadley Centre Coupled Model version 3 (HadCM3) with a multimodel ensemble (MME) by analyzing the G1 experiment from the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP). The PPE only perturbed a small number of parameters and shares a common structure with the unperturbed HadCM3 model, and so the additional weight the PPE adds to the robustness of the common climate response features in the MME is minor. However, analysis of the PPE indicates some of the factors that drive the spread within the MME. We isolate the role of global mean temperature biases for both ensembles and find that these biases have little effect on the ensemble spread in the hydrological response but do reduce the spread in surface air temperature response, particularly at high latitudes. We investigate the role of the preindustrial climatology and find that biases here are likely a key source of ensemble spread at the zonal and grid cell level. The role of vegetation, and its response to elevated CO2 concentrations through the CO2 physiological effect and changes in plant productivity, is also investigated and proves to have a substantial effect on the terrestrial hydrological response to solar geoengineering and to be a major source of variation within the GeoMIP ensemble

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7cc11nn

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2014-07-16T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact