The influence of South American regional climate on the simulation of the Southern Hemisphere extratropical circulation

MENÉNDEZ, CLAUDIO G.; LI, LAURENT Z. X.; FALCO, MAGDALENA; LI, LAURENT Z. X.; CARRIL, ANDREA F.; MENÉNDEZ, CLAUDIO G.; FALCO, MAGDALENA; CARRIL, ANDREA F.

CLIMATE DYNAMICS

SPRINGER

Año: 2019 p. 6469 - 6488

0930-7575

This paper presents new modeling evidence showing the added value of high-resolution information from South America (SA)in the simulation of the Southern Hemisphere (SH) extratropical circulation. LMDZ, a coarse-resolution atmospheric globalgeneral circulation model constitutes the main tool for this investigation. Parallel to the control simulation, a two-way nesting(TWN) simulation of LMDZ is performed with an interactive coupling to the same model, but with a higher-resolution zoomover SA. The third simulation is a perfect boundary simulation for which re-analysis information from ERA-Interim is usedto nudge LMDZ, but only over SA. Results indicate that enhanced resolution over SA improves the representation of the mostimportant processes that influence extratropical eddy activity. The local improvement is followed by a better representation of theglobal extratropical circulation, especially in austral summer. The regional climate enhancement over SA has positive effects onsimulation of the midlatitude jet position during the austral summer by significantly reducing the bias of the mean zonal kineticenergy outside the nudged zone. On the other hand, the wintertime general circulation outside the nudged-zone shows a limitedbias-reduction for the regional-driven simulations, especially in the case of the TWN system. However, improvements of theTWN system compared to the control experiment are noticed in early stages of cyclone lifecycle, as it is identified in a bettersimulation of transient meridional heat transport and transient kinetic energy intensity. The findings of the present study suggest,thus, that improvements in resolution over SA effectively excite the simulation of the mean atmospheric circulation in the SH.