Shi et al. (2025) The Effects of Sea‐State‐Dependent Surface Fluxes on CESM2 Climate Simulations

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-12-01
• Authors: Xiaoming Shi, Qing Li, Diah Valentina Lestari, Shangfei Lin, Hui Su
• DOI: 10.1029/2025ms005284

Research Groups

• Community Earth System Model (CESM) development team (likely National Center for Atmospheric Research - NCAR)
• WAVEWATCH III development community

Short Summary

This study implements and evaluates a sea-state-dependent surface flux scheme, incorporating prognostic ocean waves via WAVEWATCH III, into CESM2, demonstrating significant improvements in mean atmospheric circulation and upper ocean biases.

Objective

• To implement and document a sea-state-dependent surface flux scheme, considering wave effects on ocean surface roughness and sea spray on sensible and latent heat, within the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2) by integrating WAVEWATCH III.
• To evaluate the impacts of this new scheme on the climate mean state, atmospheric circulation, and upper ocean properties, and assess its ability to reduce existing model biases.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global (with specific mentions of Southern Ocean, eastern boundary currents, eastern and central Pacific)
• Temporal Scale: Climate mean state and variability, recent decades

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2), WAVEWATCH III (prognostic ocean surface wave model)
• Data sources: Implied comparison with observational and/or reanalysis data for model validation and bias assessment.

Main Results

• The new sea-state-dependent surface flux scheme significantly impacts mean atmospheric circulation and the upper ocean.
• Errors in mean atmospheric circulation and surface temperature patterns are reduced.
• The modified surface flux lowers the eddy-driven jet speed and weakens the Hadley circulation.
• Global sea surface temperature (SST) warm bias is reduced, particularly due to cooling in the Southern Ocean and eastern boundary currents.
• A weak cooling trend is simulated in parts of the eastern and central Pacific for recent decades, which reduces an existing SST trend bias in CESM2.

Contributions

• First implementation and documentation of a sea-state-dependent surface flux scheme, incorporating prognostic ocean waves, within a major Earth System Model (CESM2).
• Demonstrates the critical importance of representing ocean surface waves for accurate simulation of air-sea momentum, heat, and water exchange in climate models.
• Significantly reduces long-standing biases in atmospheric circulation and sea surface temperature patterns in CESM2, improving its fidelity for climate simulations.

Funding

• Not specified in the abstract.

Citation

@article{Shi2025Effects,
  author = {Shi, Xiaoming and Li, Qing and Lestari, Diah Valentina and Lin, Shangfei and Su, Hui},
  title = {The Effects of Sea‐State‐Dependent Surface Fluxes on CESM2 Climate Simulations},
  journal = {Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1029/2025ms005284},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2025ms005284}
}