We present a description of the ModelE2 version of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) General Circulation Model (GCM) and the configurations used in the simulations performed for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). We use six variations related to the treatment of the atmospheric composition, the calculation of aerosol indirect effects, and ocean model component. Specifically, we test the difference between atmospheric models that have noninteractive composition, where radiatively important aerosols and ozone are prescribed from precomputed decadal averages, and interactive versions where atmospheric chemistry and aerosols are calculated given decadally varying emissions. The impact of the first aerosol indirect effect on clouds is either specified using a simple tuning, or parameterized using a cloud microphysics scheme. We also use two dynamic ocean components: the Russell and HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) which differ significantly in their basic formulations and grid. Results are presented for the climatological means over the satellite era taken from transient simulations starting from the preindustrial (1850) driven by estimates of appropriate forcings over the 20th Century. Differences in base climate and variability related to the choice of ocean model are large, indicating an important structural uncertainty. The impact of interactive atmospheric composition on the climatology is relatively small except in regions such as the lower stratosphere, where ozone plays an important role, and the tropics, where aerosol changes affect the hydrological cycle and cloud cover. While key improvements over previous versions of the model are evident, these are not uniform across all metrics.

partners who deplete groundwater to produce these crops, highlighting risks for global food and water security. Groups of countries are found particularly exposed to these risks as they both produce and import food irrigated from rapidly depleting aquifers, such as the USA, Mexico, Iran and China.These results can help improve the sustainability of global food production and groundwater resources management by identifying priority regions and agricultural products at risk as well as the end-consumers of these products.

The soil moisture state simulated by a land surface model is a highly modeldependent quantity, meaning that the direct transfer of one model's soil moisture into another can lead to a fundamental, and potentially detrimental, inconsistency. This is first illustrated with two recent examples, one from the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) involving seasonal precipitation forecasting, and another from the realm of ecological modeling. The issue is then further addressed through a quantitative analysis of soil moisture contents produced as part of a global offline simulation experiment in which a number of land surface models were driven with the same atmospheric forcing fields. These latter comparisons clearly demonstrate, on a global scale, the degree to which model-simulated soil moisture variables differ from each other and that these differences extend beyond those associated with model-specific layer thicknesses or soil texture. The offline comparisons also show, however, that once the climatological statistics of each model's soil moisture variable are accounted for (here, through a simple scaling using the first two moments), the different land models tend to produce very similar information on temporal soil moisture variability in most parts of the world. This common information can perhaps be used as the basis for successful mappings between the soil moisture variables of different land models.-3 -