A Total Energy Error Analysis of Dynamical Cores and Physics-Dynamics Coupling in the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM)

Abstract

A closed total energy (TE) budget is of utmost importance in coupled climate system modeling; in particular, the dynamical core or physics-dynamics coupling should ideally not lead to spurious TE sources/sinks. To assess this in a global climate model, a detailed analysis of the spurious sources/sinks of TE in National Center for Atmospheric Research's Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) is given. This includes spurious sources/sinks associated with the parameterization suite, the dynamical core, TE definition discrepancies, and physics-dynamics coupling. The latter leads to a detailed discussion of the pros and cons of various physics-dynamics coupling methods commonly used in climate/weather modeling.