Wood et al 2020: IGCM4 Model Output for Southern Hemisphere Jet Stream Response to CO2

Model output from the Reading Intermediate Global Circulation Model (IGCM4) used to study the Southern Hemisphere jet stream's response to CO2 forcing. The dataset includes five 120-year long simulations following a 5-year spin-up, comparing control and perturbation experiments. It was created by Tom Wood of the University of Leeds for a 2020 study published in Environmental Research Letters.

Use Cases

• Analyze the role of sea surface temperature patterns in jet stream shifts based on the prescribed SST anomalies from CMIP5 and CMIP6 models.
• Compare the effects of full versus regionally isolated (SH extratropical) SST changes on atmospheric circulation using the SHET-only experiments.
• Investigate the methodological impact of normalizing SST anomalies to a global mean of 2.2 K and fixing sea ice at preindustrial values.
• Validate or benchmark other climate model outputs against the IGCM4 experiments designed for like-for-like comparison with CMIP abrupt-4xCO2 simulations.

Strengths

• Includes five distinct 120-year long climate model simulations, providing a substantial temporal baseline for analysis.
• Experiments are designed for direct comparison with CMIP5 and CMIP6 protocols, enabling like-for-like analysis.
• Methodology details are specific, including the use of a cosine squared weighting function to smooth SST anomalies between 18°S and 29°S.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale processing.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

University of Leeds, Tom Wood

Collection Method

Output from version 4 of the Reading Intermediate Global Circulation Model (IGCM4) simulations.

Time Range

Simulations are 120 years long following a 5-year spin-up; specific calendar years are not provided.

Geography

Global focus, with specific perturbation experiments isolating the Southern Hemisphere extratropics (poleward of 18°S).