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Do climate models reproduce complexity of observed sea level changes?
Author(s) -
Becker M.,
Karpytchev M.,
Marcos M.,
Jevrejeva S.,
LennartzSassinek S.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2016gl068971
Subject(s) - scaling , environmental science , general circulation model , climatology , climate change , gauge (firearms) , atmospheric sciences , physics , oceanography , mathematics , geology , geography , geometry , archaeology
The ability of Atmosphere‐Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) to capture the statistical behavior of sea level (SL) fluctuations has been assessed at the local scale. To do so, we have compared scaling behavior of the SL fluctuations simulated in the historical runs of 36 CMIP5 AOGCMs to that in the longest (>100 years) SL records from 23 tides gauges around the globe. The observed SL fluctuations are known to manifest a power law scaling. We have checked if the SL changes simulated in the AOGCM exhibit the same scaling properties and the long‐term correlations as observed in the tide gauge records. We find that the majority of AOGCMs overestimates the scaling of SL fluctuations, particularly in the North Atlantic. Consequently, AOGCMs, routinely used to project regional SL rise, may underestimate the part of the externally driven SL rise, in particular the anthropogenic footprint, in the projections for the 21st century.