Response to Increasing Southern Hemisphere Winds in CCSM4

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.