The Diurnal Cycle and Its Depiction in the Community Climate System Model

Abstract

To evaluate the performance of version 2 of the Community Climate System Model (CCSM2) in simulating the diurnal cycle and to diagnose the deficiencies in underlying model physics, 10 years of 3-hourly data from a CCSM2 control run are analyzed for global and large-scale features of diurnal variations in surface air temperature, surface pressure, upper-air winds, cloud amount, and precipitation. The model-simulated diurnal variations are compared with available observations, most of which were derived from 3-hourly synoptic reports and some new results are reported for surface air temperatures. The CCSM2 reproduces most of the large-scale tidal variations in surface pressure and upper-air winds, although it overestimates the diurnal pressure tide by 20%–50% over low-latitude land and underestimates it over most oceans, the Rockies, and other midlatitude land areas. The CCSM2 captures the diurnal amplitude (1°–6°C) and phase [peak at 1400–1600 local solar time (LST)] of surface air temperature over land, but over ocean the amplitude is too small (≤0.2°C). The CCSM2 overestimates the mean total cloud amount by 10%–20% of the sky from ∼15°S to 15°N during both December– January–February (DJF) and June–July–August (JJA) and over northern mid- and high-latitude land areas in DJF, whereas it underestimates the cloud amount by 10%–30% in the subtropics and parts of the midlatitudes. Over the marine stratocumulus regions west to the continents, the diagnostic cloud scheme in the CCSM2 underestimates the mean stratocumulus amount by 10%–30% and does not simulate the observed large diurnal variations (∼3%–10%) in the marine stratocumulus clouds even when driven by observational data. In the CCSM2, warm-season daytime moist convection over land starts prematurely around 0800 LST, about 4 hours too early compared with observations, and plateaus from 1100 to 1800 LST, in contrast to a sharp peak around 1600–1700 LST in observations. The premature initiation of convection prevents convective available potential energy (CAPE) from accumulating in the morning and early afternoon and intense convection from occurring in the mid to late afternoon. As a result of the extended duration of daytime convection over land, the CCSM2 rains too frequently at reduced intensity despite the fairly realistic patterns of rainy days with precipitation >1 mm day⁻¹. Furthermore, the convective versus nonconvective precipitation ratio is too high in the model as deep convection removes atmospheric moisture prematurely. The simulated diurnal cycle of precipitation is too weak over the oceans, especially for convective precipitation. These results suggest that substantial improvements are desirable in the CCSM2 in simulating cloud amount, initiation of warm-season deep convection over land, and in the diurnal cycle in sea surface temperatures.