The Twentieth Century Historical Climate Simulation of FGOALS

Abstract

The twentieth century historical changes of surface air temperature (SAT) simulated by two versions of FGOALS are compared to the observations over the period 1850-2005. The global and hemispheric averages of SAT and their land and ocean components during 1850-2005 are well reproduced by FGOALS-g2. The significant positive correlations are firstly determined by the warming trends, and secondly by inter-decadal fluctuations. The major weakness of FGOALS-s2 model is an exaggerated warming response to anthropogenic forcing. The observation features a warming trend of 0.74 °C/100 yr for global averages during 1906-2005. This trend is overestimated by FGOALS-s2 (1.34 °C/100 yr) but underestimated by FGOALS-g2 (0.65 °C/100 yr).The meridional gradient of warming trend over East Asia simulated by FGOALS-s2 (FGOALS-g2) is stronger (weaker) than the observations.