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 toward 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.