Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Mesoscale Modeling of the Eocene Ice-Free Arctic

Daniel Kirk-Davidoff of U Maryland is presenting on the Eocene. They are following through the idea of polar clouds might keep heat in in the troposphere (Sloan's idea). He worked on using models of convective and attempting to get a "nighttime conditions"24/7 in his model. Compared two simulations.

Models are not good at modeling convection. They changed the boundary conditions. Tried forcing model into the higher temperature and then look at circulation. Quick and dirty. 10km resolution. start with 10 deg higher. then 15 deg higher. no change in Co2. very quick and dirty.

six weeks of simulations with warf. He wanted a hurricane in the polar, permanently, but he didn't get it. However, he did get a permanent storm system, slow but steady. 75 deg and north. They wanted reduction in OLR in upper troposphere and moist. WARF looks good for some. CAM works better for low clouds. Interestingly, high convection reduces low cloud formation.

Increasing convection makes cooling in the arctic worse. Wow. OLR == outgoing long wave radiation. Not the answer to the PETM at first glance.

more clean up later.

No comments: