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Updated: Apr 27, 2026

A CO2 Concentration Gradient Facility for Testing CO2 Enrichment and Soil Effects on Grassland Ecosystem Function
Published on: November 21, 2015
Effects of explicit atmospheric convection at high CO2
Nathan P Arnold1, Mark Branson2, Melissa A Burt2
1Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; eli@eps.harvard.edu nathan@atmos.colostate.edu randall@atmos.colostate.edu.
Abstract:
The effect of clouds on climate remains the largest uncertainty in climate change predictions, due to the inability of global climate models (GCMs) to resolve essential small-scale cloud and convection processes. We compare preindustrial and quadrupled CO2 simulations between a conventional GCM in which convection is parameterized and a "superparameterized" model in which convection is explicitly simulated with a cloud-permitting model in each grid cell. We find that the global responses of the two models to increased CO2 are broadly similar: both simulate ice-free Arctic summers, wintertime Arctic convection, and enhanced Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) activity. Superparameterization produces significant differences at both CO2 levels, including greater Arctic cloud cover, further reduced sea ice area at high CO2, and a stronger increase with CO2 of the MJO.
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