Calculate sterodynamic sea-level patterns from CMIP6 models#

Overview#

The recipe recipe_steric_patterns calculates sterodynamic sea-level change patterns from CMIP6 model datasets. Patterns are calculated for the SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios.

These patterns are useful because we can emulate spatially-resolved sterodynamic sea-level rise from global thermal expansion at a fraction of the computational cost of running a fully-coupled Earth system model or ocean model.

The methods for this recipe are derived from those in Palmer et al. (2020) which themselves are rooted in the IPCC AR5 report.

Note

The regrid setting in the recipe is set to a (180, 360) grid to put all models on the same grid.

Available recipes and diagnostics#

Recipes are stored in esmvaltool/recipes/

  • recipe_steric_patterns.yml

Diagnostics are stored in esmvaltool/diag_scripts/steric_patterns/

  • steric_patterns.py: generates sterodynamic patterns from input datasets

  • sub_funcs.py: set of sub functions to assist with the main script

User settings in recipe#

  1. Script steric_patterns.py

    Required settings for script

    None

    Optional settings for script

    None

    Required settings for variables

    • short_name

    • additional_datasets

    • exp

    Optional settings for variables

    None

    Required settings for preprocessor

    • regular_grid: regrids data to a (180, 360) grid

    Optional settings for preprocessor

    None

Variables#

  1. Script steric_patterns.py

  • zostoga (ocean, monthly, time)

  • zos (ocean, monthly, longitude, latitude, time)

Observations and reformat scripts#

None

References#

  • Palmer, M. D., Gregory, J. M., Bagge, M., Calvert, D., Hagedoorn, J. M., & Howard, T., et al. (2020). Exploring the drivers of global and local sea-level change over the 21st century and beyond. Earth’s Future, 8, e2019EF001413. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001413

  • Perks, R., & Weeks, J. (2023). MetOffice/ProFSea-tool: v1.0.0 (v1.0.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10255468

Example plots#

../_images/detrended.png

Fig. 375 Detrended zostoga, correcting for model drift using the pre-industrial (PiControl) experiment following Palmer et al., (2020). This is done for each model and scenario.#

../_images/regressions.png

Fig. 376 Example of the regressions between the global thermal expansion (zostoga) and local dynamic sea-level height (zos) for three random grid-cells. The coordinate for each of the grid-cells is shown in the top-right corner of each panel.#

../_images/predictions.png

Fig. 377 Example end-of-century predictions from the UKESM1-0-LL model patterns for each SSP, as well as a timeseries of globally-averaged mean-squared error. Two polar artifacts can be seen in each map panel, seemingly occuring due to ESMValTool’s regridding functionality. This seems to occur more often on low-resolution models as opposed to high-res.#