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Evaluation of climate models using palaeoclimatic data

Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages 417–424 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

There is large uncertainty about the magnitude of warming and how rainfall patterns will change in response to any given scenario of future changes in atmospheric composition and land use. The models used for future climate projections were developed and calibrated using climate observations from the past 40 years. The geologic record of environmental responses to climate changes provides a unique opportunity to test model performance outside this limited climate range. Evaluation of model simulations against palaeodata shows that models reproduce the direction and large-scale patterns of past changes in climate, but tend to underestimate the magnitude of regional changes. As part of the effort to reduce model-related uncertainty and produce more reliable estimates of twenty-first century climate, the Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project is systematically applying palaeoevaluation techniques to simulations of the past run with the models used to make future projections. This evaluation will provide assessments of model performance, including whether a model is sufficiently sensitive to changes in atmospheric composition, as well as providing estimates of the strength of biosphere and other feedbacks that could amplify the model response to these changes and modify the characteristics of climate variability.

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Figure 1: Comparison of reconstructed and simulated changes in regional climates during the mid-Holocene and the Last Glacial Maximum.
Figure 2: Relationships between key temperature indices at the Last Glacial Maximum as shown by observations and model simulations.
Figure 3: Estimation of the difference in radiative forcing and feedbacks at the LGM compared with pre-industrial conditions caused by changes in boundary conditions.

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Acknowledgements

We thank our PMIP colleagues for contributing to the PMIP simulation archive and to the benchmark syntheses, as well as for discussions of the PMIP analyses. The analyses and figures use the PMIP database release of January 2010 (http://pmip2.lsce.ipsl.fr/database/).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Insitut Pierre Simon Laplace/Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, unité mixte de recherches CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Orme des Merisiers, bât 712, Gif sur Yvette Cedex, 91191, France

    Pascale Braconnot, Masa Kageyama & Valerie Masson-Delmotte

  2. School of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, 2109, New South Wales, Australia

    Sandy P. Harrison & Yan Zhao

  3. Department of Geography, University of Oregon, Eugene, 97403-1251, Oregon, USA

    Patrick J. Bartlein

  4. Center for Climate System Research, University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, 277-8569, Japan

    Ayako Abe-Ouchi

  5. Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, 80305, Colorado, USA

    Bette Otto-Bliesner

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Braconnot, P., Harrison, S., Kageyama, M. et al. Evaluation of climate models using palaeoclimatic data. Nature Clim Change 2, 417–424 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1456

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