Atmospheric Ocean System

Upwelling-Diffusion Climate Model, documentation, input and output

The Upwelling-Diffusion Climate Model (UDCM) of IMAGE 2.4, which has not and changed since IMAGE 2.2 represents the core-model of the Atmospheric Ocean System (AOS), . UDCM converts the concentrations of the different greenhouse gases and SO2 emissions into radiative forcings and, successively, into temperature changes of the global-mean surface and the ocean.

Model documentation 

UDCM is based on the MAGICC model of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) (Hulme et al., 2000). The MAGICC model is the most widely used simple climate model within the IPCC (2001). More details on MAGICC can be found in Raper et al. (1996) and Hulme et al. (2000). The implementation of MAGICC in IMAGE and the calculation of the radiative forcings is described by Eickhout et al. (2001).  

Relation with other models 

For geographical pattern-scaling (GPS), UDCM can be used in the following way to account for the nonlinearity of climate forcing by sulphate aerosols. If GPS uses different GCM patterns based on climate forcing by combining forcing due solely to greenhouse gases, sulphate and regional sulphate, UDCM is used to calculate the corresponding temperature changes. A differentiation in forcing ratios is not applied. This is explained in detail in GPS. 

Model input and output 

The model input and output of UDCM are presented in the table below.

• to  Upwelling-Diffusion Climate Model, description
• to  external references
• to  MNP references