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Continued oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2 is projected to significantly alter the chemistry of the upper oceans, potentially having serious consequences for the marine ecosystems. Projections of ocean acidification are primarily determined from prescribed emission pathways within large scale earth system models. Rather than running the cumbersome earth system models, we can use a reduced-form model to quickly emulate the CMIP5 models for projection studies under arbitrary emission pathways and for uncertainty analyses of the marine carbonate system. In this study we highlight the capability of Hector v1.1, a reduced-form model, to project changes in the upper ocean carbonate system over the next three centuries. Hector is run under historical emissions and a high emissions scenario (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5), comparing its output to observations and CMIP5 models that contain ocean biogeochemical cycles. Ocean acidification changes are already taking place, with significant changes projected to occur over the next 300 years. We project a low latitude (> 55°) surface ocean pH decrease from preindustrial conditions by 0.4 units to 7.77 at 2100, and an additional 0.27 units to 7.50 at 2300. Aragonite saturations decrease by 1.85 units to 2.21 at 2100 and an additional 0.80 units to 1.42 at 2300. Under a high emissions scenario, for every 1 °C of future warming we find a 0.107 unit pH decrease and a 0.438 unit decrease in aragonite saturations. Hector reproduces the global historical trends, and future projections with equivalent rates of change over time compared to observations and CMIP5 models. Hector is a robust tool that can be used for quick ocean acidification projections, accurately emulating large scale climate models under multiple emission pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integrated Earth system model (iESM) has been developed as a new tool for projecting the joint human/ climate system. The iESM is based upon coupling an integrated assessment model (IAM) and an Earth system model (ESM) into a common modeling infrastructure. IAMs are the primary tool for describing the human--Earth system, including the sources of global greenhouse gases (GHGs) and short-lived species (SLS), land use and land cover change (LULCC), and other resource-related drivers of anthropogenic climate change. ESMs are the primary scientific tools for examining the physical, chemical, and biogeochemical impacts of human-induced changes to the climate system. The iESM project integrates the economic and humandimension modeling of an IAM and a fully coupled ESM within a single simulation system while maintaining the separability of each model if needed. Both IAM and ESM codes are developed and used by large communities and have been extensively applied in recent national and international climate assessments. By introducing heretofore-omitted feedbacks between natural and societal drivers, we can improve scientific understanding of the human--Earth system dynamics. Potential applications include studies of the interactions and feedbacks leading to the timing, scale, and geographic distribution of emissions trajectories and other human influences, corresponding climate effects, and the subsequent impacts of a changing climate on human and natural systems. This paper describes the formulation, requirements, implementation, testing, and resulting functionality of the first version of the iESM released to the global climate community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple climate models play an integral role in the policy and scientific communities. They are used for climate mitigation scenarios within integrated assessment models, complex climate model emulation, and uncertainty analyses. Here we describe Hector v1.0, an open source, object-oriented, simple global climate carbon-cycle model. This model runs essentially instantaneously while still representing the most critical global-scale earth system processes. Hector has a three-part main carbon cycle: a one-pool atmosphere, land, and ocean. The model's terrestrial carbon cycle includes primary production and respiration fluxes, accommodating arbitrary geographic divisions into, e.g., ecological biomes or political units. Hector actively solves the inorganic carbon system in the surface ocean, directly calculating air-sea fluxes of carbon and ocean pH. Hector reproduces the global historical trends of atmospheric [CO2], radiative forcing, and surface temperatures. The model simulates all four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) with equivalent rates of change of key variables over time compared to current observations, MAGICC (a well-known simple climate model), and models from the 5th Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project. Hector's flexibility, open-source nature, and modular design will facilitate a broad range of research in various areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human activities are significantly altering biogeochemical cycles at the global scale, and the scope of these activities will change with both future climate and socioeconomic decisions. This poses a significant challenge for Earth system models (ESMs), which can incorporate land use change as prescribed inputs but do not actively simulate the policy or economic forces that drive land use change. One option to address this problem is to couple an ESM with an economically oriented integrated assessment model, but this is challenging because of the radically different goals and underpinnings of each type of model. This study describes the development and testing of a coupling between the terrestrial carbon cycle of an ESM (CESM) and an integrated assessment (GCAM) model, focusing on how CESM climate effects on the carbon cycle could be shared with GCAM. We examine the best proxy variables to share between the models, and we quantify how carbon flux changes driven by climate, CO2 fertilization, and land use changes (e.g., deforestation) can be distinguished from each other by GCAM. The net primary production and heterotrophic respiration outputs of the Community Land Model (CLM), the land component of CESM, were found to be the most robust proxy variables by which to recalculate GCAM's assumptions of equilibrium ecosystem steady-state carbon. Carbon cycle effects of land use change are spatially limited relative to climate effects, and thus we were able to distinguish these effects successfully in the model coupling, passing only the latter to GCAM. This paper does not present results of a fully coupled simulation but shows, using a series of offline CLM simulations and an additional idealized Monte Carlo simulation, that our CESM-GCAM proxy variables reflect the phenomena that we intend and do not contain erroneous signals due to land use change. By allowing climate effects from a full ESM to dynamically modulate the economic and policy decisions of an integrated assessment model, this work will help link these models in a robust and flexible framework capable of examining two-way interactions between human and Earth system processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple climate models play an integral role in policy and scientific communities. They are used for climate mitigation scenarios within integrated assessment models, complex climate model emulation, and uncertainty analyses. Here we describe Hector v0.1, an open source, object-oriented, simple global climate carbon-cycle model. This model runs essentially instantaneously while still representing the most critical global scale earth system processes. Hector has three main carbon pools: an atmosphere, land, and ocean. The model's terrestrial carbon cycle includes respiration and primary production, accommodating arbitrary geographic divisions into, e.g., ecological biomes or political units. Hector's actively solves the inorganic carbon system in the surface ocean, directly calculating air-sea fluxes of carbon and ocean pH. Hector reproduces the global historical trends of atmospheric [CO2] and surface temperatures. The model simulates all four Representative Concentration Pathways with high correlations (R > 0.7) with current observations, MAGICC (a well-known simple climate model), and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project version 5. Hector is freely available under an open source license, and its modular design will facilitate a broad range of research in various areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]