Climate model projections from the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) of CMIP6

Tebaldi, Claudia; Debeire, Kevin; Eyring, Veronika; Fischer, Erich; Fyfe, John; Friedlingstein, Pierre; Knutti, Reto; Lowe, Jason; O'Neill, Brian; Sanderson, Benjamin; van Vuuren, Detlef; Riahi, Keywan; Meinshausen, Malte; Nicholls, Zebedee; Tokarska, Katarzyna B.; Hurtt, George; Kriegler, Elmar; Lamarque, Jean-Francois; Meehl, Gerald; Moss, Richard; Bauer, Susanne E.; Boucher, Olivier; Brovkin, Victor; Byun, Young-Hwa; Dix, Martin; Gualdi, Silvio; Guo, Huan; John, Jasmin G.; Kharin, Slava; Kim, YoungHo; Koshiro, Tsuyoshi; Ma, Libin; Olivié, Dirk; Panickal, Swapna; Qiao, Fangli; Rong, Xinyao; Rosenbloom, Nan; Schupfner, Martin; Séférian, Roland; Sellar, Alistair; Semmler, Tido; Shi, Xiaoying; Song, Zhenya; Steger, Christian; Stouffer, Ronald; Swart, Neil; Tachiiri, Kaoru; Tang, Qi; Tatebe, Hiroaki; Voldoire, Aurore; Volodin, Evgeny; Wyser, Klaus; Xin, Xiaoge; Yang, Shuting; Yu, Yongqiang; Ziehn, Tilo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-253-2021

Articles | Volume 12, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-253-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-253-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 1

Research article

|

01 Mar 2021

Research article |

| 01 Mar 2021

Climate model projections from the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) of CMIP6

Claudia Tebaldi, Kevin Debeire, Veronika Eyring, Erich Fischer, John Fyfe, Pierre Friedlingstein, Reto Knutti, Jason Lowe, Brian O'Neill, Benjamin Sanderson, Detlef van Vuuren, Keywan Riahi, Malte Meinshausen, Zebedee Nicholls, Katarzyna B. Tokarska, George Hurtt, Elmar Kriegler, Jean-Francois Lamarque, Gerald Meehl, Richard Moss, Susanne E. Bauer, Olivier Boucher, Victor Brovkin, Young-Hwa Byun, Martin Dix, Silvio Gualdi, Huan Guo, Jasmin G. John, Slava Kharin, YoungHo Kim, Tsuyoshi Koshiro, Libin Ma, Dirk Olivié, Swapna Panickal, Fangli Qiao, Xinyao Rong, Nan Rosenbloom, Martin Schupfner, Roland Séférian, Alistair Sellar, Tido Semmler, Xiaoying Shi, Zhenya Song, Christian Steger, Ronald Stouffer, Neil Swart, Kaoru Tachiiri, Qi Tang, Hiroaki Tatebe, Aurore Voldoire, Evgeny Volodin, Klaus Wyser, Xiaoge Xin, Shuting Yang, Yongqiang Yu, and Tilo Ziehn

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Final revised paper (published on 01 Mar 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Sep 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of Tebaldi et al', Anonymous Referee #1, 28 Oct 2020
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer 1', Claudia Tebaldi, 02 Dec 2020
RC2: 'Review of "Climate model projections from the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) of CMIP6"', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Nov 2020
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer 2', Claudia Tebaldi, 02 Dec 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (23 Dec 2020) by Yun Liu

AR by Claudia Tebaldi on behalf of the Authors (28 Dec 2020) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (30 Dec 2020) by Yun Liu

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (30 Dec 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I thank the authors for the careful revisions. I have only two small remaining comments that might be considered for the final version. I do not need to see the paper again.

On the CMIP6-CMIP5 difference maps: the authors state that differences in the Arctic are “known to be affected by large variations among model, scenarios and internal noise.” These maps are all normalized by GMST, so the scenario differences should be greatly reduced. Similarly, the influence of internal variability should be greatly reduced due to the averaging of 30+ models. Therefore, I think the differences can be largely attributed to model differences, possibly in regional feedbacks. This is actually quite consistent with Hawkins and Sutton (2009) and Lehner et al. (2020). I understand the authors want to be cautious here, as a detailed analysis is beyond the scope of the paper, but in this case the existing literature might offer enough to make this statement a little more precise. Similarly for precipitation, where the uncertainty in the tropics might be largely due to model differences. One could add that there might be scenario-dependent model uncertainty (see also Yip et al., 2011), as the aerosol trajectories can be quite different between RCPs and SSPs, further complicating the regional perspective in some of these plots even after normalizing by GMST.

In the first review, I had commented on the possible novelty of the decrease in decadal variability of global precipitation. The authors replied with references to two papers that focus on global temperature variability, not precipitation. Is the assumption simply that precipitation is controlled largely by temperature in a global sense and thus should follow a similar trend of decreasing variability? I’m not suggesting to investigate this in depth here, but a more explicit link of the cited papers (on temperature variability) with the question on precipitation variability could be helpful.

References
Hawkins, E., and R. Sutton, 2009: The potential to narrow uncertainty in regional climate predictions. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 90, 1095–1107, https://doi.org/10.1175/2009BAMS2607.1.
Lehner, F., C. Deser, N. Maher, J. Marotzke, E. M. Fischer, L. Brunner, R. Knutti, and E. Hawkins, 2020: Partitioning climate projection uncertainty with multiple large ensembles and CMIP5/6. Earth Syst. Dyn., 11, 491–508, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-491-2020.
Yip, S., C. A. T. Ferro, D. B. Stephenson, and E. Hawkins, 2011: A Simple, coherent framework for partitioning uncertainty in climate predictions. J. Clim., 24, 4634–4643, https://doi.org/10.1175/2011JCLI4085.1.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (02 Jan 2021)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (02 Jan 2021) by Yun Liu

AR by Claudia Tebaldi on behalf of the Authors (05 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (20 Jan 2021) by Yun Liu

AR by Claudia Tebaldi on behalf of the Authors (20 Jan 2021) Manuscript

Short summary

We present an overview of CMIP6 ScenarioMIP outcomes from up to 38 participating ESMs according to the new SSP-based scenarios. Average temperature and precipitation projections according to a wide range of forcings, spanning a wider range than the CMIP5 projections, are documented as global averages and geographic patterns. Times of crossing various warming levels are computed, together with benefits of mitigation for selected pairs of scenarios. Comparisons with CMIP5 are also discussed.