Enforcing conservation of axial angular momentum in the atmospheric general circulation model CAM6

Numerical general circulation models of the atmosphere are generally required to conserve mass and energy for their application to climate studies. Here we draw attention to another conserved global integral, viz. the component of angular momentum (AM) along the Earth's axis of rotation, which tends to receive less consideration. We demonstrate the importance of global AM conservation in climate simulations with the example of the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) with the finite-volume (FV) dynamical core, which produces a noticeable numerical sink of AM. We use a combination of mathematical analysis and numerical diagnostics to pinpoint the main source of AM non-conservation in CAM–FV. We then present a method to enforce global conservation of AM, and we discuss the results in a hierarchy of numerical simulations of the atmosphere of increasing complexity. In line with theoretical expectations, we show that even a crude, non-local enforcement of AM conservation in the simulations consistently results in the mitigation of certain persistent model biases.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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