This work documents the first version of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) new EnergyExascale Earth System Model (E3SMv1). We focus on the standard resolution of the fully coupled physical model designed to address DOE mission-relevant water cycle questions. Its components include atmosphere and land (110-km grid spacing), ocean and sea ice (60 km in the midlatitudes and 30 km at the equator and poles), and river transport (55 km) models. This base configuration will also serve as a foundation for additional configurations exploring higher horizontal resolution as well as augmented capabilities in the form of biogeochemistry and cryosphere configurations. The performance of E3SMv1 is evaluated by means of a standard set of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Characterization of Klima simulations consisting of a long preindustrial control, historical simulations (ensembles of fully coupled and prescribed SSTs) as well as idealized CO 2 forcing simulations. The model performs well overall with biases typical of other CMIP-class models, although the simulated Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weaker than many CMIP-class models. While the E3SMv1 historical ensemble captures the bulk of the observed warming between preindustrial (1850) and present day, the trajectory of the warming diverges from observations in the Key Points: • This work documents E3SMv1, the first version of the U.S. DOE Energy Exascale Earth System Model • The performance of E3SMv1 is documented with a set of standard CMIP6 DECK and historical simulations comprising nearly 3,000 years • E3SMv1 has a high equilibrium climate sensitivity (5.3 K) and strong aerosol-related effective radiative forcing (-1.65 W/m 2 ) Correspondence to: Chris Golaz, golaz1@llnl.gov Citation: Golaz, J.-C., Caldwell, P. M., Van Roekel, L. P., Petersen, M. R., Tang, Q., Wolfe, J. D., et al. (2019). The DOE E3SM coupled model version 1: Overview and evaluation at standard resolution. second half of the twentieth century with a period of delayed warming followed by an excessive warming trend. Using a two-layer energy balance model, we attribute this divergence to the model's strong aerosol-related effective radiative forcing (ERF ari+aci = −1.65 W/m 2 ) and high equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS = 5.3 K). Plain Language Summary The U.S. Department of Energy funded the development of a new state-of-the-art Earth system model for research and applications relevant to its mission. The Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 1 (E3SMv1) consists of five interacting components for the global atmosphere, land surface, ocean, sea ice, and rivers. Three of these components (ocean, sea ice, and river) are new and have not been coupled into an Earth system model previously. The atmosphere and land surface components were created by extending existing components part of the Community Earth System Model, Version 1. E3SMv1's capabilities are demonstrated by performing a set of standardized simulation experiments described by...

The Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP), initiated in 1989 under the auspices of the World Climate Research Programme, undertook the systematic validation, diagnosis, and intercomparison of the performance of atmospheric general circulation models. For this purpose all models were required to simulate the evolution of the climate during the decade 1979-88, subject to the observed monthly average temperature and sea ice and a common prescribed atmospheric C02 concentration and solar constant. By 1995, 31 modeling groups, representing virtually the entire international atmospheric modeling community, had contributed the required standard output of the monthly means of selected statistics. These data have been analyzed by the participating modeling groups, by the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, and by the more than two dozen AMIP diagnostic subprojects that have been established to examine specific aspects of the models' performance. Here the analysis and validation of the AMIP results as a whole are summarized in order to document the overall performance of atmospheric general circulation-climate models as of the early 1990s. The infrastructure and plans for continuation of the AMIP project are also reported on.Although there are apparent model outliers in each simulated variable examined, validation of the AMIP models' ensemble mean shows that the average large-scale seasonal distributions of pressure, temperature, and circulation are reasonably close to what are believed to be the best observational estimates available. The large-scale structure of the ensemble mean precipitation and ocean surface heat flux also resemble the observed estimates but show particularly large intermodel differences in low latitudes. The total cloudiness, on the other hand, is rather poorly simulated, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. The models' simulation of the seasonal cycle (as represented by the amplitude and phase of the first annual harmonic of sea level pressure) closely resembles the observed variation in almost all regions. The ensemble's simulation of the interannual variability of sea level pressure in the tropical Pacific is reasonably close to that observed (except for its underestimate of the amplitude of major El Ninos), while the interannual variability is less well simulated in midlatitudes. When analyzed in terms of the variability of the evolution of their combined spacetime patterns in comparison to observations, the AMIP models are seen to exhibit a wide range of accuracy, with no single model performing best in all respects considered.Analysis of the subset of the original AMIP models for which revised versions have subsequently been used to revisit the experiment shows a substantial reduction of the models' systematic errors in simulating cloudiness but only a slight reduction of the mean seasonal errors of most other variables. In order to understand better the nature of these errors and to accelerate the rate of model improvement, an expanded and continuing project (...

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Metrics are proposed—that is, a few summary statistics that condense large amounts of data from observations or model simulations—encapsulating the diurnal cycle of precipitation. Vector area averaging of Fourier amplitude and phase produces useful information in a reasonably small number of harmonic dial plots, a procedure familiar from atmospheric tide research. The metrics cover most of the globe but down-weight high-latitude wintertime ocean areas where baroclinic waves are most prominent. This enables intercomparison of a large number of climate models with observations and with each other. The diurnal cycle of precipitation has features not encountered in typical climate model intercomparisons, notably the absence of meaningful “average model” results that can be displayed in a single two-dimensional map. Displaying one map per model guides development of the metrics proposed here by making it clear that land and ocean areas must be averaged separately, but interpreting maps from all models becomes problematic as the size of a multimodel ensemble increases. Global diurnal metrics provide quick comparisons with observations and among models, using the most recent version of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). This includes, for the first time in CMIP, spatial resolutions comparable to global satellite observations. Consistent with earlier studies of resolution versus parameterization of the diurnal cycle, the longstanding tendency of models to produce rainfall too early in the day persists in the high-resolution simulations, as expected if the error is due to subgrid-scale physics.