Climate Modeling

The purpose of this chapter is to describe current Southern Hemisphere climate model simulation capabilities in terms of seasonal mean quantities, the annual cycle, interannual and longer timescale variability, and possible future climate change. Climate modeling is defined here to include global climate simulations with general circulation models. Since the timescales will include monthly to seasonal to interannual to interdecadal and longer, the subject matter of this chapter is distinct from numerical weather prediction studies on shorter-than-monthly timescales. The climate models covered in this chapter involve spatial resolutions from about 2° × 2° to 5° × 5°. A number of the climate model results in this chapter will include some type of interactive ocean surface as well as specified SST experiments.