The Impact of Horizontal Resolution on North American Monsoon Gulf of California Moisture Surges in a Suite of Coupled Global Climate Models

AbstractThe impact of atmosphere and ocean horizontal resolution on the climatology of North American monsoon Gulf of California (GoC) moisture surges is examined in a suite of global circulation models (CM2.1, FLOR, CM2.5, CM2.6, and HiFLOR) developed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). These models feature essentially the same physical parameterizations but differ in horizontal resolution in either the atmosphere (≃200, 50, and 25 km) or the ocean (≃1°, 0.25°, and 0.1°). Increasing horizontal atmospheric resolution from 200 to 50 km results in a drastic improvement in the model’s capability of accurately simulating surge events. The climatological near-surface flow and moisture and precipitation anomalies associated with GoC surges are overall satisfactorily simulated in all higher-resolution models. The number of surge events agrees well with reanalyses, but models tend to underestimate July–August surge-related precipitation and overestimate September surge-related rainfall in the sou...

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