Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology Earth System Model and its simulation characteristics

In our presentation, we will show the performance of a new earth system model developed at the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST), called the KIOST-ESM. The KIOST-ESM is based on a low-resolution version of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Climate Model version 2.5. The main changes made to the base model include using new cumulus convection and ocean mixed layer parameterization schemes, which improve the model fidelity significantly. In addition, the KIOST-ESM adopts dynamic vegetation and new soil respiration schemes in its land model component. The performance of the KIOST-ESM was assessed in pre-industrial and historical simulations that are made as part of its participation into Climate Model Intercomparison Project phase 6. The response of the earth system to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations were analyzed in the ScenarioMIP simulations. The KIOST-ESM exhibited superior performance compared to the base model in terms of the mean sea surface temperature over the Southern Ocean and over the cold tongue in the tropical Pacific. The KIOST-ESM can also simulate the dominant tropical variability in the intraseasonal (Madden-Julian Oscillation) and interannual (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) timescales more realistically than the base model. On the other hand, like many other contemporary ESMs, the KIOST-ESM showed notable cold bias in the Northern Hemisphere, and the so-called double-Intertropical Convergence Zone bias remains. The ScenarioMIP results confirm the global average surface atmospheric temperature responds to the CO₂ concentration.