The fourth version of the Community Climate System Model (CCSM4) was recently completed and released to the climate community. This paper describes developments to all CCSM components, and documents fully coupled preindustrial control runs compared to the previous version, CCSM3. Using the standard atmosphere and land resolution of 1° results in the sea surface temperature biases in the major upwelling regions being comparable to the 1.4°-resolution CCSM3. Two changes to the deep convection scheme in the atmosphere component result in CCSM4 producing El Niño–Southern Oscillation variability with a much more realistic frequency distribution than in CCSM3, although the amplitude is too large compared to observations. These changes also improve the Madden–Julian oscillation and the frequency distribution of tropical precipitation. A new overflow parameterization in the ocean component leads to an improved simulation of the Gulf Stream path and the North Atlantic Ocean meridional overturning circulation. Changes to the CCSM4 land component lead to a much improved annual cycle of water storage, especially in the tropics. The CCSM4 sea ice component uses much more realistic albedos than CCSM3, and for several reasons the Arctic sea ice concentration is improved in CCSM4. An ensemble of twentieth-century simulations produces a good match to the observed September Arctic sea ice extent from 1979 to 2005. The CCSM4 ensemble mean increase in globally averaged surface temperature between 1850 and 2005 is larger than the observed increase by about 0.4°C. This is consistent with the fact that CCSM4 does not include a representation of the indirect effects of aerosols, although other factors may come into play. The CCSM4 still has significant biases, such as the mean precipitation distribution in the tropical Pacific Ocean, too much low cloud in the Arctic, and the latitudinal distributions of shortwave and longwave cloud forcings.

This paper describes the global ocean component of the NCAR Climate System Model. New parameterizations of the effects of mesoscale eddies and of the upper-ocean boundary layer are included. Numerical improvements include a third-order upwind advection scheme and elimination of the artificial North Pole island in the original MOM 1.1 code. Updated forcing fields are used to drive the ocean-alone solution, which is integrated long enough so that it is in equilibrium. The ocean transports and potential temperature and salinity distributions are compared with observations. The solution sensitivity to the freshwater forcing distribution is highlighted, and the sensitivity to resolution is also briefly discussed. Abstract This paper describes the global ocean component of the NCAR Climate System Model. New parameterizations of the effects of mesoscale eddies and of the upper-ocean boundary layer are included. Numerical improvements include a third-order upwind advection scheme and elimination of the artificial North Pole island in the original MOM 1.1 code. Updated forcing fields are used to drive the ocean-alone solution, which is integrated long enough so that it is in equilibrium. The ocean transports and potential temperature and salinity distributions are compared with observations. The solution sensitivity to the freshwater forcing distribution is highlighted, and the sensitivity to resolution is also briefly discussed.

Results from two perturbation experiments using the Community Climate System Model version 4 where the Southern Hemisphere zonal wind stress is increased are described. It is shown that the ocean response is in accord with experiments using much-higher-resolution ocean models that do not use an eddy parameterization. The key to obtaining an appropriate response in the coarse-resolution climate model is to specify a variable coefficient in the Gent and McWilliams eddy parameterization, rather than a constant value. This result contrasts with several recent papers that have suggested that coarse-resolution climate models cannot obtain an appropriate response.

Observations show that the Southern Hemisphere zonal wind stress maximumhas increased significantly over the past 30 years. Eddy-resolving ocean models show that the resulting increase in the Southern Ocean mean flow meridional overturning circulation (MOC) is partially compensated by an increase in the eddy MOC. This effect can be reproduced in the non-eddyresolving ocean component of a climate model, providing the eddy parameterization coefficient is variable and not a constant. If the coefficient is a constant, then the Southern Ocean mean MOC change is balanced by an unrealistically large change in the Atlantic Ocean MOC. Southern Ocean eddy compensation means that Southern Hemisphere winds cannot be the dominant mechanism driving midlatitude North Atlantic MOC variability. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Marine Science Volume 8 is January 03, 2016. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.

An ensemble of nine simulations for the climate of the twentieth century has been run using the Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3). Three of these runs also simulate the uptake of chlorofluorocarbon-11 (CFC-11) into the ocean using the protocol from the Ocean Carbon Model Intercomparison Project (OCMIP). Comparison with ocean observations taken between 1980 and 2000 shows that the global CFC-11 uptake is simulated very well. However, there are regional biases, and these are used to identify where too much deep-water formation is occurring in the CCSM3. The differences between the three runs simulating CFC-11 uptake are also briefly documented. The variability in ocean heat content in the 1870 control runs is shown to be only a little smaller than estimates using ocean observations. The ocean heat uptake between 1957 and 1996 in the ensemble is compared to the recent observational estimates of the secular trend. The trend in ocean heat uptake is considerably larger than the natural variability in the 1870 control runs. The heat uptake down to 300 m between 1957 and 1996 varies by a factor of 2 across the ensemble. Some possible reasons for this large spread are discussed. There is much less spread in the heat uptake down to 3 km. On average, the CCSM3 twentieth-century ensemble runs take up 25% more heat than the recent estimate from ocean observations. Possible explanations for this are that the model heat uptake is calculated over the whole ocean, and not just in the regions where there are many observations and that there is no parameterization of the indirect effects of aerosols in CCSM3.