High-resolution simulations using CAM—impacts of parameterized convection

Results from global high-resolution (0.23x0.31 degree) simulations using CAM5 are presented. Experiments were performed with and without parameterized deep convection (PDC and NoPDC). Climatologies of tropical cyclones are shown. Statistics of precipitation from both configurations are compared with statistics derived TRMM 3B42 data. Both model configurations differ in important but distinct ways from the observations. The PDC configuration exihibits excessive occurrence of moderate precipitation, while underestimating the occurrence of extreme events. The NoPDC simulation is more realistic in its frequency of moderate precipitation, but overestimates extreme events. Finally, analysis of model results using a new object-based method for identifying precipitation events is shown.