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[1] Within the Swedish Regional Climate Modeling Program, SWECLIM, a threedimensional (3-D) coupled ice-ocean model for the Baltic Sea has been developed to simulate physical processes on timescales of hours to decades. The code has been developed based on the massively parallel version of the Ocean Circulation Climate Advanced Modeling (OCCAM) project of the Bryan-Cox-Semtner model. An elasticviscous-plastic ice rheology is employed, resulting in a fully explicit numerical scheme that improves computational efficiency. An improved two-equation turbulence model has been embedded to simulate the seasonal cycle of surface mixed layer depths as well as deepwater mixing on decadal timescale. The model has open boundaries in the northern Kattegat and is forced with realistic atmospheric fields and river runoff. Optimized computational performance and advanced algorithms to calculate processor maps make the code fast and suitable for multi-year, high-resolution simulations. As test cases, the major salt water inflow event in January 1993 and the stagnation period 1980-1992, have been selected. The agreement between model results and observations is regarded as good. Especially, the time evolution of the halocline in the Baltic proper is realistically simulated also for the longer period without flux correction, data assimilation, or reinitialization. However, in particular, smaller salt water inflows into the Bornholm Basin are underestimated, independent of the horizontal model resolution used. It is suggested that the mixing parameterization still needs improvements. In addition, a series of process studies of the inflow period 1992/1993 have been performed to show the impact of river runoff, wind speed, and sea level in Kattegat. Natural interannual runoff variations control salt water inflows into the Bornholm Basin effectively. The effect of wind speed variation on the salt water flux from the Arkona Basin to the Bornholm Basin is minor.

Abstract. The Earth system model EC-Earth3 for contributions to CMIP6 is documented here, with its flexible coupling framework, major model configurations, a methodology for ensuring the simulations are comparable across different high-performance computing (HPC) systems, and with the physical performance of base configurations over the historical period. The variety of possible configurations and sub-models reflects the broad interests in the EC-Earth community. EC-Earth3 key performance metrics demonstrate physical behavior and biases well within the frame known from recent CMIP models. With improved physical and dynamic features, new Earth system model (ESM) components, community tools, and largely improved physical performance compared to the CMIP5 version, EC-Earth3 represents a clear step forward for the only European community ESM. We demonstrate here that EC-Earth3 is suited for a range of tasks in CMIP6 and beyond.

One major challenge to the improvement of regional climate scenarios for the northern high latitudes is to understand land surface feedbacks associated with vegetation shifts and ecosystem biogeochemical cycling. We employed a customized, Arctic version of the individual-based dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS to simulate the dynamics of upland and wetland ecosystems under a regional climate model-downscaled future climate projection for the Arctic and Subarctic. The simulated vegetation distribution agreed well with a composite map of actual arctic vegetation. In the future (2051-2080), a poleward advance of the forest-tundra boundary, an expansion of tall shrub tundra, and a dominance shift from deciduous to evergreen boreal conifer forest over northern Eurasia were simulated. Ecosystems continued to sink carbon for the next few decades, although the size of these sinks diminished by the late 21st century. Hot spots of increased CH 4 emission were identified in the peatlands near Hudson Bay and western Siberia. In terms of their net impact on regional climate forcing, positive feedbacks associated with the negative effects of tree-line, shrub cover and forest phenology changes on snow-season albedo, as well as the larger sources of CH 4 , may potentially dominate over negative feedbacks due to increased carbon sequestration and increased latent heat flux.

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A B S T R A C TA new regional coupled model system for the North Sea and the Baltic Sea is developed, which is composed of the regional setup of ocean model NEMO, the Rossby Centre regional climate model RCA4, the sea ice model LIM3 and the river routing model CaMa-Flood. The performance of this coupled model system is assessed using a simulation forced with ERA-Interim reanalysis data at the lateral boundaries during the period 1979Á2010. Compared to observations, this coupled model system can realistically simulate the present climate. Since the active coupling area covers the North Sea and Baltic Sea only, the impact of the ocean on the atmosphere over Europe is small. However, we found some local, statistically significant impacts on surface parameters like 2 m air temperature and sea surface temperature (SST). A precipitation-SST correlation analysis indicates that both coupled and uncoupled models can reproduce the airÁsea relationship reasonably well. However, the coupled simulation gives slightly better correlations even when all seasons are taken into account. The seasonal correlation analysis shows that the airÁsea interaction has a strong seasonal dependence. Strongest discrepancies between the coupled and the uncoupled simulations occur during summer. Due to lack of airÁsea interaction, in the Baltic Sea in the uncoupled atmosphere-standalone run the correlation between precipitation and SST is too small compared to observations, whereas the coupled run is more realistic. Further, the correlation analysis between heat flux components and SST tendency suggests that the coupled model has a stronger correlation. Our analyses show that this coupled model system is stable and suitable for different climate change studies.