A global climate model performance atlas for the Southern Hemisphere
extratropics based on regional atmospheric circulation patterns
Abstract
The performance of 61 global climate models participating in CMIP5
and 6 is evaluated for the Southern Hemisphere extratropics in terms
of typical regional-scale atmospheric circulation patterns. These
patterns are known to be linked with a number of key variables in
atmospheric physics and chemistry and provide an overarching concept for
model evaluation. First, hemispheric-wide error and ranking maps are
provided for each model and regional details are described. Then, the
results are compared with those obtained in a companion study for the
Northern Hemisphere. For most models, the average error magnitude and
ranking position is similar on both hemispheres, ruling out systematic
tuning towards either of the two. CMIP6 models perform better on
average than CMIP5 models and the interactive simulation of more
climate system components does not deteriorate the results for most
model families. Better performance is associated with higher resolution
in the atmosphere, following a non-linear relationship.