Predictability of weather and climate

Abstract:

Representing model uncertainty is important for both numerical weather and climate prediction. Stochastic parametrisation schemes are commonly used for this purpose in weather prediction, while perturbed parameter approaches are widely used in the climate community. The performance of these two representations of model uncertainty is considered in the context of the idealised Lorenz ’96 system, in terms of their ability to capture the observed regime behaviour of the system. These results are applicable to the atmosphere, where evidence points to the existence of persistent weather regimes, and where it is desirable that climate models capture this regime behaviour. The stochastic parametrisation schemes considerably improve the representation of regimes when compared to a deterministic model: both the structure and persistence of the regimes are found to improve. The stochastic parametrisation scheme represents the small scale variability present in the full system, which enables the system to explore a larger portion of the system’s attractor, improving the simulated regime behaviour. It is important that temporally correlated noise is used in the stochastic parametrisation—white noise schemes performed similarly to the deterministic model. In contrast, the perturbed parameter ensemble was unable to capture the regime structure of the attractor, with many individual members exploring only one regime. This poor performance was not evident in other climate diagnostics. Finally, a ‘climate change’ experiment was performed, where a change in external forcing resulted in changes to the regime structure of the attractor. The temporally correlated stochastic schemes captured these changes well.