A new surface boundary forcing dataset for uncoupled simulations with the Community Atmosphere Model is described. It is a merged product based on the monthly mean Hadley Centre sea ice and SST dataset version 1 (HadISST1) and version 2 of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weekly optimum interpolation (OI) SST analysis. These two source datasets were also used to supply ocean surface information to the 40-yr European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Re-Analysis (ERA-40). The merged product provides monthly mean sea surface temperature and sea ice concentration data from 1870 to the present: it is updated monthly, and it is freely available for community use. The merging procedure was designed to take full advantage of the higher-resolution SST information inherent in the NOAA OI.v2 analysis.

New estimates of the poleward energy transport based on atmospheric reanalyses from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction-National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP-NCAR) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts are presented. The analysis focuses on the period from February 1985 to April 1989 when there are reliable top-of-the-atmosphere radiation data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment. Annual mean poleward transports of atmospheric energy peak at 5.0 Ϯ 0.14 PW at 43ЊN and with similar values near 40ЊS, which is much larger than previous estimates. The standard deviation of annual and zonal mean variability from 1979 to 1998 is mostly less than 0.15 PW (1%-3%). Results are evaluated by computing the implied ocean heat transports, utilizing physical constraints, and comparing them with direct oceanographic estimates and those from successful stable coupled climate models that have been run without artificial flux adjustments for several centuries. Reasonable agreement among ocean transports is obtained with the disparate methods when the results from NCEP-NCAR reanalyses based upon residually derived (not modelgenerated) methods are used, and this suggests that improvements have occurred and convergence is to the true values. Atmospheric transports adjusted for spurious subterranean transports over land areas are inferred and show that poleward ocean heat transports are dominant only between 0Њ and 17ЊN. At 35Њ latitude, at which the peak total poleward transport in each hemisphere occurs, the atmospheric transport accounts for 78% of the total in the Northern Hemisphere and 92% in the Southern Hemisphere. In general, a much greater portion of the required poleward transport is contributed by the atmosphere than the ocean, as compared with previous estimates.

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High-resolution global climate modeling holds the promise of capturing planetary-scale climate modes and small-scale (regional and sometimes extreme) features simultaneously, including their mutual interaction. This paper discusses a new state-of-the-art high-resolution Community Earth System Model (CESM) simulation that was performed with these goals in mind. The atmospheric component was at 0.25 grid spacing, and ocean component at 0.1 . One hundred years of ''present-day'' simulation were completed. Major results were that annual mean sea surface temperature (SST) in the equatorial Pacific and ElNiño Southern Oscillation variability were well simulated compared to standard resolution models. Tropical and southern Atlantic SST also had much reduced bias compared to previous versions of the model. In addition, the high resolution of the model enabled small-scale features of the climate system to be represented, such as air-sea interaction over ocean frontal zones, mesoscale systems generated by the Rockies, and Tropical Cyclones. Associated single component runs and standard resolution coupled runs are used to help attribute the strengths and weaknesses of the fully coupled run. The high-resolution run employed 23,404 cores, costing 250 thousand processor-hours per simulated year and made about two simulated years per day on the NCAR-Wyoming supercomputer ''Yellowstone.''

The origins of the delayed increases in global surface temperature accompanying El Niño events and the implications for the role of diabatic processes in El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) are explored. The evolution of global mean surface temperatures, zonal means and fields of sea surface temperatures, land surface temperatures, precipitation, outgoing longwave radiation, vertically integrated diabatic heating and divergence of atmospheric energy transports, and ocean heat content in the Pacific is documented using correlation and regression analysis. For 1950–1998, ENSO linearly accounts for 0.06°C of global surface temperature increase. Warming events peak 3 months after SSTs in the Niño 3.4 region, somewhat less than is found in previous studies. Warming at the surface progressively extends to about ±30° latitude with lags of several months. While the development of ocean heat content anomalies resembles that of the delayed oscillator paradigm, the damping of anomalies through heat fluxes into the atmosphere introduces a substantial diabatic component to the discharge and recharge of the ocean heat content. However, most of the delayed warming outside of the tropical Pacific comes from persistent changes in atmospheric circulation forced from the tropical Pacific. A major part of the ocean heat loss to the atmosphere is through evaporation and thus is realized in the atmosphere as latent heating in precipitation, which drives teleconnections. Reduced precipitation and increased solar radiation in Australia, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, and northern South America contribute to surface warming that peaks several months after the El Niño event. Teleconnections contribute to the extensive warming over Alaska and western Canada through a deeper Aleutian low and stronger southerly flow into these regions 0–12 months later. The 1976/1977 climate shift and the effects of two major volcanic eruptions in the past 2 decades are reflected in different evolution of ENSO events. At the surface, for 1979–1998 the warming in the central equatorial Pacific develops from the west and progresses eastward, while for 1950–1978 the anomalous warming begins along the coast of South America and spreads westward. The eastern Pacific south of the equator warms 4–8 months later for 1979–1998 but cools from 1950 to 1978.

Extended, high-resolution (0.23° latitude × 0.31° longitude) simulations with Community Atmosphere Model versions 4 and 5 (CAM4 and CAM5) are examined and compared with results from climate simulations conducted at a more typical resolution of 0.9° latitude × 1.25° longitude. Overall, the simulated climate of the high-resolution experiments is not dramatically better than that of their low-resolution counterparts. Improvements appear primarily where topographic effects may be playing a role, including a substantially improved summertime Indian monsoon simulation in CAM4 at high resolution. Significant sensitivity to resolution is found in simulated precipitation over the southeast United States during winter. Some aspects of the simulated seasonal mean precipitation deteriorate notably at high resolution. Prominent among these is an exacerbated Pacific “double ITCZ” bias in both models. Nevertheless, while large-scale seasonal means are not dramatically better at high resolution, realistic tropical cyclone (TC) distributions are obtained. Some skill in reproducing interannual variability in TC statistics also appears.

An update is given of the global correlation and regression patterns of sea level pressure associated with the Southern Oscillation, based upon the reanalyses from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction-National Center for Atmospheric Research for 1958-98, a period independent of that of early work. Features over the oceans are better defined than was previously possible and most features prove to be robust, although climate changes such as the 1976 climate shift have evidently altered some important relationships, such as those with Southeast Asia. Associated surface temperature patterns are also shown over the same interval and reveal striking symmetry about the equator. For El Niño, the patterns emphasize the associated broad warming over the tropical central and eastern Pacific, as well as along the west coast of the Americas extending into high latitudes of the Pacific in both hemispheres, and cooling in the central North and South Pacific. Precipitation patterns associated with the Southern Oscillation are given based upon the post-1979 period to include satellite data over the oceans, which emphasizes that the main changes are for a global redistribution of precipitation, so that solely land-based perspectives are biased. While annual mean patterns reveal much of the geographic structure associated with the Southern Oscillation, important seasonal variations are present, especially for sea level pressure and precipitation .

Comprehensive diagnostic comparisons and evaluations have been carried out with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) and European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalyses of the vertically integrated atmospheric energy budgets. For 1979 to 1993 the focus is on the monthly means of the divergence of the atmospheric energy transports. For February 1985 to April 1989, when there are reliable top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) radiation data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), the implied monthly mean surfacē uxes are derived and compared with those from the assimilating models and from the Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set (COADS), both locally and zonally integrated, to deduce the implied ocean meridional heat transports.While broadscale aspects and some details of both the divergence of atmospheric energy and the surface¯ux climatological means are reproducible, especially in the zonal means, dierences are also readily apparent. Systematic dierences are typically $20 W m À2 . The evaluation highlights the poor results over land. Land imbalances indicate local errors in the divergence of the atmospheric energy transports for monthly means on scales of 500 km (T31) of 30 W m À2 in both reanalyses and $50 W m À2 in areas of high topography and over Antarctica for NCEP/NCAR. Over the oceans in the extratropics, the monthly mean anomaly time series of the vertically integrated total energy divergence from the two reanalyses correspond reasonably well, with correlations exceeding 0.7. A common monthly mean climate signal of about 40 W m À2 is inferred along with local errors of 25 to 30 W m À2 in most extratropical regions.Except for large scales, there is no useful common signal in the tropics, and reproducibility is especially poor in regions of active convection and where stratocumulus prevails. Although time series of monthly anomalies of surface bulk¯uxes from the two models and COADS agree very well over the northern extratropical oceans, the total ®elds all contain large systematic biases which make them unsuitable for determining ocean heat transports. TOA biases in absorbed shortwave, outgoing longwave and net radiation from both reanalysis models are substantial (>20 W m À2 in the tropics) and indicate that clouds are a primary source of problems in the model¯uxes, both at the surface and the TOA. Time series of monthly COADS surface¯uxes are shown to be unreliable south of about 20 N where there are fewer than 25 observations per 5 square per month. Only the derived surface¯uxes give reasonable implied meridional ocean heat transports.