A Process-Oriented Evaluation of Tropical Cyclones in the DOE E3SMv1 Simulations
This study evaluates tropical cyclones (TCs) that are simulated in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 1 (E3SMv1) that is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Two E3SMv1 simulations are considered: a 0.25-degree high-resolution (HR) fully coupled simulation and 1-degree low-resolution (LR) AMIP simulation. As expected, the HR simulation produces a greater number of global TCs per year than the LR simulation, but the annual global numbers of TCs in both simulations are lower than the observations. The HR simulation produces stronger TCs more frequently than the LR simulation, but still less frequently than the observations. We compare the simulated TC structures to the observations to further evaluate the ability of the E3SMv1 in simulating TCs. Preliminary results suggest that E3SM-simulated TC wind structures are in qualitatively good agreement with the observations and the area-averaged rainfall of E3SM-simulated TCs is close to that derived from the satellite observations. This work also evaluates how well the observed modulation of TCs by the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is represented in the E3SM simulation, and the MJO-TC relationship is found to be reasonably represented in the simulation.