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https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-024-07210-5. In this article 17 references, which were wrongly moved to the Supplementary Information, need to be added. The list of added references as given below: The original article has been corrected

Abstract: Subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) prediction of droughts and floods is one of the major challenges of weather and climate prediction. Recent studies suggest that the springtime land surface temperature/subsurface temperature (LST/SUBT) over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) can be a new source of S2S predictability. The project “Impact of Initialized Land Surface Temperature and Snowpack on Subseasonal to Seasonal Prediction (LS4P)” was initiated to study the impact of springtime LST/SUBT anomalies over high mountain areas on summertime precipitation predictions. The present work explores the simulated global scale response of the atmospheric circulation to the springtime TP land surface cooling by 16 current state-of-the-art Earth System Models (ESMs) participating in the LS4P Phase I (LS4P-I) experiment. The LS4P-I results show, for the first time, that springtime TP surface anomalies can modulate a persistent quasi-barotropic Tibetan Plateau-Rocky Mountain Circumglobal (TRC) wave train from the TP via the northeast Asia and Bering Strait to the western part of the North America, along with the springtime westerly jet from TP across the whole North Pacific basin. The TRC wave train modulated by the TP thermal anomaly play a critical role on the early summer surface air temperature and precipitation anomalies in the regions along the wave train, especially over the northwest North America and the southern Great Plains. The participant models that fail in capturing the TRC wave train greatly under-predict climate anomalies in reference to observations and the successful models. These results suggest that the TP LST/SUBT anomaly via the TRC wave train is the first order source of the S2S variability in the regions mentioned. Furthermore, the TP surface temperature anomaly can influence the Southern Hemispheric circulation by generating cross-equator wave trains. However, the simulated propagation pathways from the TP into the Southern Hemisphere show large inter-model differences. More dynamical understanding of the TRC wave train as well as its cross-equator propagation into the Southern Hemisphere will be explored in the newly launched LS4P phase II experiment.

Abstract: The prediction skill for precipitation anomalies in late spring and summer months—a significant component of extreme climate events—has remained stubbornly low for years. This paper presents a new idea that utilizes information on boreal spring land surface temperature/subsurface temperature (LST/SUBT) anomalies over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) to improve prediction of subsequent summer droughts/floods over several regions over the world, East Asia and North America in particular. The work was performed in the framework of the GEWEX/LS4P Phase I (LS4P-I) experiment, which focused on whether the TP LST/SUBT provides an additional source for subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) predictability. The summer 2003, when there were severe drought/flood over the southern/northern part of the Yangtze River basin, respectively, has been selected as the focus case. With the newly developed LST/SUBT initialization method, the observed surface temperature anomaly over the TP has been partially produced by the LS4P-I model ensemble mean, and 8 hotspot regions in the world were identified where June precipitation is significantly associated with anomalies of May TP land temperature. Consideration of the TP LST/SUBT effect has produced about 25–50% of observed precipitation anomalies in most hotspot regions. The multiple models have shown more consistency in the hotspot regions along the Tibetan Plateau-Rocky Mountain Circumglobal (TRC) wave train. The mechanisms for the LST/SUBT effect on the 2003 drought over the southern part of the Yangtze River Basin are discussed. For comparison, the global SST effect has also been tested and 6 regions with significant SST effects were identified in the 2003 case, explaining about 25–50% of precipitation anomalies over most of these regions. This study suggests that the TP LST/SUBT effect is a first-order source of S2S precipitation predictability, and hence it is comparable to that of the SST effect. With the completion of the LS4P-I, the LS4P-II has been launched and the LS4P-II protocol is briefly presented.

This work documents version two of the Department of Energy's Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). E3SMv2 is a significant evolution from its predecessor E3SMv1, resulting in a model that is nearly twice as fast and with a simulated climate that is improved in many metrics. We describe the physical climate model in its lower horizontal resolution configuration consisting of 110 km atmosphere, 165 km land, 0.5° river routing model, and an ocean and sea ice with mesh spacing varying between 60 km in the mid-latitudes and 30 km at the equator and poles. The model performance is evaluated with Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Characterization of Klima simulations augmented with historical simulations as well as simulations to evaluate impacts of different forcing agents. The simulated climate has many realistic features of the climate system, with notable improvements in clouds and precipitation compared to E3SMv1. E3SMv1 suffered from an excessively high equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) of 5.3 K. In E3SMv2, ECS is reduced to 4.0 K which is now within the plausible range based on a recent World Climate Research Program assessment. However, a number of important biases remain including a weak Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, deficiencies in the characteristics and spectral distribution of tropical atmospheric variability, and a significant underestimation of the observed warming in the second half of the historical period. An analysis of single-forcing simulations indicates that correcting the historical temperature bias would require a substantial reduction in the magnitude of the aerosol-related forcing.

Subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) precipitation prediction in boreal spring and summer months, which contains a significant number of high-signal events, is scientifically challenging and prediction skill has remained poor for years. Tibetan Plateau (TP) spring observed surface temperatures show a lag correlation with summer precipitation in several remote regions, but current global land-atmosphere coupled models are unable to represent this behavior due to significant errors in producing observed TP surface temperatures. To address these issues, the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) program launched the "Impact of Initialized Land Temperature and Snowpack on Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Prediction"(LS4P) initiative as a community effort to test the impact of land temperature in high-mountain regions on S2S prediction by climate models: more than 40 institutions worldwide are participating in this project. After using an innovative new land state initialization approach based on observed surface 2-m temperature over the TP in the LS4P experiment, results from a multimodel ensemble provide evidence for a causal relationship in the observed association between the Plateau spring land temperature and summer precipitation over several regions across the world through teleconnections. The influence is underscored by an out-of-phase oscillation between the TP and Rocky Mountain surface temperatures. This study reveals for the first time that high-mountain land temperature could be a substantial source of S2S precipitation predictability, and its effect is probably as large as ocean surface temperature over global "hotspot"regions identified here; the ensemble means in some "hotspots"produce more than 40% of the observed anomalies. This LS4P approach should stimulate more follow-on explorations.

Virtual Workshop on Subseasonal to Seasonal Climate Forecasting for Water Management in the Western U.S. What: Scientists and stakeholders came together to discuss forecast priorities for western U.S. water resource management and to review existing and emerging methodologies that can improve prediction of precipitation, circulation regimes, and atmospheric rivers at lead times of weeks to months. When: 15–17 March 2022 Where: Online, hosted by IRI, Columbia Climate School

Abstract. Sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) prediction, especially the prediction of extreme hydroclimate events such as droughts and floods, is not only scientifically challenging but has substantial societal impacts. Motivated by preliminary studies, the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX)/Global Atmospheric System Study (GASS) has launched a new initiative called Impact of initialized Land Surface temperature and Snowpack on Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Prediction (LS4P), as the first international grass-root effort to introduce spring land surface temperature (LST)/subsurface temperature (SUBT) anomalies over high mountain areas as a crucial factor that can lead to significant improvement in precipitation prediction through the remote effects of land/atmosphere interactions. LS4P focuses on process understanding and predictability, hence it is different from, and complements, other international projects that focus on the operational S2S prediction. More than forty groups worldwide have participated in this effort, including 21 Earth System Models, 9 regional climate models, and 7 data groups. This paper overviews the history and objectives of LS4P, provides the first phase experimental protocol (LS4P-I) which focuses on the remote effect of the Tibetan Plateau, discusses the LST/SUBT initialization, and presents the preliminary results. Multi-model ensemble experiments and analyses of observational data have revealed that the hydroclimatic effect of the spring LST in the Tibetan Plateau is not limited to the Yangtze River basin but may have a significant large-scale impact on summer precipitation and its S2S prediction. LS4P models are unable to preserve the initialized LST anomalies in producing the observed anomalies largely for two main reasons: i) inadequacies in the land models arising from total soil depths which are too shallow and the use of simplified parameterizations which both tend to limit the soil memory; and ii) reanalysis data, that are used for initial conditions, have large discrepancies from the observed mean state and anomalies of LST over the Tibetan Plateau. Innovative approaches have been developed to largely overcome these problems.

Tropical forests are an important part of global water and energy cycles, but the mechanisms that drive seasonality of their land-atmosphere exchanges have proven challenging to capture in models. Here, we (1) report the seasonality of fluxes of latent heat (LE), sensible heat (H), and outgoing short and longwave radiation at four diverse tropical forest sites across Amazonia-along the equator from the Caxiuanã and Tapajós National Forests in the eastern Amazon to a forest near Manaus, and from the equatorial zone to the southern forest in Reserva Jaru; (2) investigate how vegetation and climate influence these fluxes; and (3) evaluate land surface model performance by comparing simulations to observations. We found that previously identified failure of models to capture observed dry-season increases in evapotranspiration (ET) was associated with model overestimations of (1) magnitude and seasonality of Bowen ratios (relative to aseasonal observations in which sensible was only 20%-30% of the latent heat flux) indicating model exaggerated water limitation, (2) canopy emissivity and reflectance (albedo was only 10%-15% of incoming solar radiation, compared to 0.15%-0.22% simulated), and (3) vegetation temperatures (due to underestimation of dry-season ET and associated cooling). These partially compensating model-observation discrepancies (e.g., higher temperatures expected from excess Bowen ratios were partially ameliorated by brighter leaves and more interception/evaporation) significantly biased seasonal model estimates of net radiation (Rn ), the key driver of water and energy fluxes (LE ~ 0.6 Rn and H ~ 0.15 Rn ), though these biases varied among sites and models. A better representation of energy-related parameters associated with dynamic phenology (e.g., leaf optical properties, canopy interception, and skin temperature) could improve simulations and benchmarking of current vegetation-atmosphere exchange and reduce uncertainty of regional and global biogeochemical models.

The Community Land Model (CLM) is the land component of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and is used in several global and regional modeling systems. In this paper, we introduce model developments included in CLM version 5 (CLM5), which is the default land component for CESM2. We assess an ensemble of simulations, including prescribed and prognostic vegetation state, multiple forcing data sets, and CLM4, CLM4.5, and CLM5, against a range of metrics including from the International Land Model Benchmarking (ILAMBv2) package. CLM5 includes new and updated processes and parameterizations: (1) dynamic land units, (2) updated parameterizations and structure for hydrology and snow (spatially explicit soil depth, dry surface layer, revised groundwater scheme, revised canopy interception and canopy snow processes, updated fresh snow density, simple firn model, and Model for Scale Adaptive River Transport), (3) plant hydraulics and hydraulic redistribution, (4) revised nitrogen cycling (flexible leaf stoichiometry, leaf N optimization for photosynthesis, and carbon costs for plant nitrogen uptake), (5) global crop model with six crop types and time-evolving irrigated areas and fertilization rates, (6) updated urban building energy, (7) carbon isotopes, and (8) updated stomatal physiology. New optional features include demographically structured dynamic vegetation model (Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator), ozone damage to plants, and fire trace gas emissions coupling to the atmosphere. Conclusive establishment of improvement or degradation of individual variables or metrics is challenged by forcing uncertainty, parametric uncertainty, and model structural complexity, but the multivariate metrics presented here suggest a general broad improvement from CLM4 to CLM5.

Abstract: We report on a multiyear set of airborne field campaigns (2005–16) off the California coast to examine aerosols, clouds, and meteorology, and how lessons learned tie into the upcoming NASA Earth Venture Suborbital (EVS-3) campaign: Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE; 2019–23). The largest uncertainty in estimating global anthropogenic radiative forcing is associated with the interactions of aerosol particles with clouds, which stems from the variability of cloud systems and the multiple feedbacks that affect and hamper efforts to ascribe changes in cloud properties to aerosol perturbations. While past campaigns have been limited in flight hours and the ability to fly in and around clouds, efforts sponsored by the Office of Naval Research have resulted in 113 single aircraft flights (>500 flight hours) in a fixed region with warm marine boundary layer clouds. All flights used nearly the same payload of instruments on a Twin Otter to fly below, in, and above clouds, producing an unprecedented dataset. We provide here i) an overview of statistics of aerosol, cloud, and meteorological conditions encountered in those campaigns and ii) quantification of model-relevant metrics associated with aerosol–cloud interactions leveraging the high data volume and statistics. Based on lessons learned from those flights, we describe the pragmatic innovation in sampling strategy (dual-aircraft approach with combined in situ and remote sensing) that will be used in ACTIVATE to generate a dataset that can advance scientific understanding and improve physical parameterizations for Earth system and weather forecasting models, and for assessing next-generation remote sensing retrieval algorithms.

This work documents the first version of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) new Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SMv1). We focus on the standard resolution of the fully coupled physical model designed to address DOE mission-relevant water cycle questions. Its components include atmosphere and land (110-km grid spacing), ocean and sea ice (60 km in the midlatitudes and 30 km at the equator and poles), and river transport (55 km) models. This base configuration will also serve as a foundation for additional configurations exploring higher horizontal resolution as well as augmented capabilities in the form of biogeochemistry and cryosphere configurations. The performance of E3SMv1 is evaluated by means of a standard set of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Characterization of Klima simulations consisting of a long preindustrial control, historical simulations (ensembles of fully coupled and prescribed SSTs) as well as idealized CO2 forcing simulations. The model performs well overall with biases typical of other CMIP-class models, although the simulated Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weaker than many CMIP-class models. While the E3SMv1 historical ensemble captures the bulk of the observed warming between preindustrial (1850) and present day, the trajectory of the warming diverges from observations in the second half of the twentieth century with a period of delayed warming followed by an excessive warming trend. Using a two-layer energy balance model, we attribute this divergence to the model's strong aerosol-related effective radiative forcing (ERFari+aci = −1.65 W/m2) and high equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS = 5.3 K).

Marine boundary layer clouds play a critical role in Earth's energy balance. Their microphysical and radiative properties are highly impacted by ambient aerosols and dynamic forcings. In this study, we evaluate the representation of these clouds and related aerosol–cloud interaction processes in the single-column version of the E3SM climate model (SCM) against field measurements collected during the NASA ACTIVATE campaign over the western North Atlantic, as well as intercompare results with high-resolution process level models. We show that E3SM SCM reproduces the macrophysical properties of post-frontal boundary layer clouds in a cold-air outbreak (CAO) case well. However, it generates fewer but larger cloud droplets compared to aircraft measurements. Further sensitivity tests show that the underestimation of both aerosol number concentration and vertical velocity variance contributes to this bias. Aerosol–cloud interactions are examined by perturbing prescribed aerosol properties in E3SM SCM with fixed dynamics. Higher aerosol number concentration or hygroscopicity leads to more numerous but smaller cloud droplets, resulting in a stronger cooling via shortwave cloud forcing. This apparent Twomey effect is consistent with prior climate model studies. The cloud liquid water path shows a weakly positive relation with cloud droplet number concentration due to precipitation suppression. This weak aerosol effect on cloud macrophysics may be attributed to the dominant impact of strong dynamical forcing associated with the CAO. Our findings indicate that the SCM framework is a key tool to bridge the gap between climate models, process level models, and field observations to facilitate process level understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1960s was an exciting era for atmospheric predictability research: a finite predictability of the atmosphere was uncovered using Lorenz's models and the well-acknowledged predictability limit of two weeks was estimated using a general circulation model (GCM). Here, we delve into details regarding how a correlation between the two-week predictability limit and a doubling time of five days was established, recognize Lorenz's pioneering work, and suggest non-impossibility for predictability beyond two weeks. We reevaluate the outcomes of three different approaches—dynamical, empirical, and dynamical-empirical—presented in Lorenz's and Charney et al.'s papers from the 1960s. Using the intrinsic characteristics of the irregular solutions found in Lorenz's studies and the dynamical approach, a doubling time of five days was estimated using the Mintz–Arakawa model and extrapolated to propose a predictability limit of approximately two weeks. This limit is now termed "Predictability Limit Hypothesis", drawing a parallel to Moore's Law, to recognize the combined direct and indirect influences of Lorenz, Mintz, and Arakawa under Charney's leadership. The concept serves as a bridge between the hypothetical predictability limit and practical model capabilities, suggesting that long-range simulations are not entirely constrained by the two-week predictability hypothesis. These clarifications provide further support to the exploration of extended-range predictions using both partial differential equation (PDE)-physics-based and Artificial Intelligence (AI)—powered approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ocean surface wind speed (i.e., wind speed 10 m above sea level) is a critical parameter used by atmospheric models to estimate the state of the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL). Accurate surface wind speed measurements in diverse locations are required to improve characterization of MABL dynamics and assess how models simulate large-scale phenomena related to climate change and global weather patterns. To provide these measurements, this study introduces and evaluates a new surface wind speed data product from the NASA Langley Research Center nadir-viewing High Spectral Resolution Lidar – generation 2 (HSRL-2) using data collected as part of the NASA Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE) mission. The HSRL-2 can directly measure vertically resolved aerosol backscatter and extinction profiles without additional constraints or assumptions, enabling the instrument to accurately derive atmospheric attenuation and directly determine surface reflectance (i.e., surface backscatter). Also, the high horizontal spatial resolution of the HSRL-2 retrievals (0.5 s or ∼ 75 m along track) allows the instrument to probe the fine-scale spatial variability in surface wind speeds over time along the flight track and over breaks in broken cloud fields. A rigorous evaluation of these retrievals is performed by comparing coincident HSRL-2 and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Airborne Vertical Atmosphere Profiling System (AVAPS) dropsonde data, owing to the joint deployment of these two instruments on the ACTIVATE King Air aircraft. These comparisons show correlations of 0.89, slopes of 1.04 and 1.17, and y intercepts of - 0.13 and - 1.05 ms-1 for linear and bisector regressions, respectively, and the overall accuracy is calculated to be 0.15 ± 1.80 ms-1. It is also shown that the dropsonde surface wind speed data most closely follow the HSRL-2 distribution of wave slope variance using the distribution proposed by Hu et al. (2008) rather than the ones proposed by Cox and Munk (1954) and Wu (1990) for surface wind speeds below 7 ms-1 , with this category comprising most of the ACTIVATE data set. The retrievals are then evaluated separately for surface wind speeds below 7 ms-1 and between 7 and 13.3 ms-1 and show that the HSRL-2 retrieves surface wind speeds with a bias of ∼ 0.5 ms-1 and an error of ∼ 1.5 ms-1 , a finding not apparent in the cumulative comparisons. Also, it is shown that the HSRL-2 retrievals are more accurate in the summer (- 0.18 ± 1.52 ms-1) than in the winter (0.63 ± 2.07 ms-1), but the HSRL-2 is still able to make numerous (N=236) accurate retrievals in the winter. Overall, this study highlights the abilities and assesses the performance of the HSRL-2 surface wind speed retrievals, and it is hoped that further evaluation of these retrievals will be performed using other airborne and satellite data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An observing system simulation experiment (OSSE) is a modeling experiment used to evaluate the value of a new observing system. when actual observational data are not available. An OSSE system [...]

Abstract Data from three research flights, conducted over water near the California coast, are used to investigate the boundary between stratocumulus cloud decks and clearings of different sizes. Large clearings exhibit a diurnal cycle with growth during the day and contraction overnight and a multiday life cycle that can include oscillations between growth and decay, whereas a small coastal clearing was observed to be locally confined with a subdiurnal lifetime. Subcloud aerosol characteristics are similar on both sides of the clear–cloudy boundary in the three cases, while meteorological properties exhibit subtle, yet important, gradients, implying that dynamics, and not microphysics, is the primary driver for the clearing characteristics. Transects, made at multiple levels across the cloud boundary during one flight, highlight the importance of microscale (~1 km) structure in thermodynamic properties near the cloud edge, suggesting that dynamic forcing at length scales comparable to the convective eddy scale may be influential to the larger-scale characteristics of the clearing. These results have implications for modeling and observational studies of marine boundary layer clouds, especially in relation to aerosol–cloud interactions and scales of variability responsible for the evolution of stratocumulus clearings.