A Climate Simulation Dataset From 11 Overriding Experiments for Analysing Cloud and Air–Sea Feedbacks

Abstract

ABSTRACT Under global warming, cloud change and its radiative feedback have often been considered to evolve from thermodynamic processes; however, cloud feedback may also force sea surface temperature to trigger such air–sea interactions. Due to complex cloud physics in air–sea coupling, this contributes to the surface warming pattern formation with significant uncertainty. Here we develop a novel overriding technique for climate projections that substitutes specific variables in control runs to isolate such feedback mechanisms, decoupling thermodynamic, dynamical and radiative responses of the surface ocean to the atmosphere. We apply this to the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2) and perform a series of 150‐year simulations with 1% CO2 increase per year (1pctCO2). In real time, the key variables under 1pctCO2 are replaced with those from the current climate, such as downwelling shortwave radiation, wind speed in latent and sensible heat and wind stress. These experiments provide monthly output of global distributions including surface temperatures, winds and precipitation, with a spatial resolution of 1.9° × 2.5° in latitude and longitude and 32 levels for the atmosphere and of ~1° and 60 layers designated as gx1v7 for the ocean. This open access dataset for partial air–sea coupling under climate change can help understand the tropical and polar warming patterns and quantify the relative contributions of forcing and triggering mechanisms.

Keywords

• air–sea interaction
• climate simulation
• cloud feedback
• global warming
• overriding experiment