Presentation, calibration and testing of the DCESS II Earth system model of intermediate complexity (version 1.0)

Abstract. A new Earth system model of intermediate complexity, DCESS II, is presented that builds upon, improves and extends the Danish Center for Earth System Science (DCESS) Earth system model (DCESS I). DCESS II has considerably greater spatial resolution than DCESS I while retaining the fine, 100 m vertical resolution in the ocean. It contains modules for the atmosphere, ocean, ocean sediment, land biosphere and lithosphere and is designed to deal with global change simulations on scales of years to millions of years while using limited computational resources. Tracers of the atmospheric module are temperature, nitrous oxide, methane (12,13C isotopes), carbon dioxide (12,13,14C isotopes) and atmospheric oxygen. For the ocean module, tracers are conservative temperature, absolute salinity, water 18O, phosphate, dissolved inorganic carbon (12,13,14C isotopes), alkalinity and dissolved oxygen. Furthermore, the ocean module considers simplified dynamical schemes for large-scale meridional circulation and sea ice dynamics, stratification-dependent vertical diffusion, a gravity current approach to the formation of Antarctic Bottom Water, and improvements in ocean biogeochemistry. DCESS II has two hemispheres with six zonally averaged atmospheric boxes and 12 ocean sectors distributed across the Indian–Pacific, the Atlantic, the Arctic and the Southern oceans. A new extended land biosphere scheme is implemented that considers three different vegetation types whereby net primary production depends on sunlight and atmospheric carbon dioxide. The ocean sediment and lithosphere model formulations are adopted from DCESS I but now applied to the multiple ocean and land regions of the new model. Model calibration was carried out for the pre-industrial climate, and model steady-state solutions were compared against available modern-day observations. For the most part, calibration results agree well with observed data, including excellent agreement with ocean carbon species. This serves to demonstrate model utility for dealing with the global carbon cycle. Finally, two idealized experiments were carried out in order to explore model performance. First, we forced the model by varying Ekman transport out of the model Southern Ocean, mimicking the effect of Southern Hemisphere westerly wind variations, and second, we imposed freshwater melting pulses from the Antarctic ice sheet on the model Southern Ocean shelf. Changes in ocean circulation and in the global carbon cycle found in these experiments are in line with results from much more complex models. Thus, we find DCESS II to be a useful and computationally friendly tool for simulations of past climates as well as for future Earth system projections.