General circulation models (GCMs) of the climate system are powerful tools for understanding and predicting climate and climate change. The last glacial maximum (LGM) provides an extreme test of the model’s ability to simulate a change of climate, and allows us to increase our understanding of mechanisms of climate change. We have used a coupled high resolution ocean–atmosphere GCM (HadCM3) to ...

Surface temperature, precipitation, specific humidity and wind anomalies associated with the warm and cold phases of ENSO simulated by WRF and HadRM are examined for the present and future decades. WRF is driven by ECHAM5 and CCSM3, respectively, and HadRM is driven by HadCM3. For the current decades, the ECHAM5-WRF, CCSM3-WRF and HadRM simulations are broadly consistent with the observed warm-...

The equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) of the two perturbed physics ensembles (PPE) generated using structurally different GCMs, MIROC3.2 and HadSM3, is investigated. We develop a method to quantify the SW cloud feedback by clouds with different cloud top pressure. We find that the difference in the ensemble means of the ECS between the two ensembles is mainly caused by differences in the SW...