Most research which examines IPCC climate of the 20th century projections uses monthly averaged model output data. Our research question is “Can these state of the art climate models represent the varying behavior of the temperature field over differing averaging periods?” We will examine several temporal resolutions, three-hourly, daily and where applicable monthly temperature data. For three-hourly results we will present the magnitude and phase of the diurnal cycle of temperature and compare these to observations. We will also present results which quantify the variability and trends of these data.

For daily and monthly data we also will have access to level temperature data which will be directly compared to observed MSU data and other observational estimates. We will show results highlighting unique measures of sensitivity, variability, trends and coupling. Time permitting we will compare these results to differing IPCC projection results and examine the way these measures are expected to change.