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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 31, L10206, doi:10.1029/2004GL019499, 2004

Volcanic forcing improves Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled General Circulation Model scaling performance

D. Vyushin

Minerva Center and Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel


I. Zhidkov

Minerva Center and Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel


S. Havlin

Minerva Center and Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel


A. Bunde

Institut für Theoretische Physik III, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Giessen, Germany


S. Brenner

Department of Geography, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel


Abstract

Recent Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled General Circulation Model (AOGCM) simulations of the twentieth century climate, which account for anthropogenic and natural forcings, make it possible to study the origin of long-term temperature correlations found in the observed records. We study ensemble experiments performed with the NCAR PCM for 10 different historical forced simulations, including no forcings, greenhouse gas, sulfate aerosol, ozone, solar, volcanic forcing and various combinations, such as natural, anthropogenic and all forcings. We compare the scaling exponents characterizing the long-term correlations of the observed and simulated model data for 16 representative land stations and 16 sites in the Atlantic Ocean for these forcings. We find that inclusion of volcanic forcing in the AOGCM considerably improves the PCM scaling behavior. The simulations containing volcanic forcing are able to reproduce quite well the observed scaling exponents for the land with exponents around 0.65 independent of the station distance from the ocean. For the Atlantic Ocean, simulations with the volcanic forcing slightly underestimate the observed persistence exhibiting an average exponent 0.74 as compared to 0.85 for the Kaplan reconstructed data.

Received 15 January 2004; accepted 28 April 2004; published 28 May 2004.

Index Terms: 0370 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Volcanic effects (8409); 0910 Exploration Geophysics: Data processing; 3309 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Climatology (1620); 4532 Oceanography: Physical: General circulation; 7538 Solar Physics, Astrophysics, and Astronomy: Solar irradiance.

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Citation: Vyushin, D., I. Zhidkov, S. Havlin, A. Bunde, and S. Brenner (2004), Volcanic forcing improves Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled General Circulation Model scaling performance, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L10206, doi:10.1029/2004GL019499.