Reducing the climate shift in a new coupled model

Climate drift refers to spurious long-term changes that may be inherent in coupled models when external forcing factors are fixed. Understanding the sources of this drift and tuning the drift are crucial for obtaining reasonable simulations from coupled models. To prepare for the upcoming Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6, a new coupled model has been constructed based on the Community Earth System Model and the Grid-point Atmospheric Model of IAP LASG version 2. However, the surface temperature predicted by the new model is too underestimated, and this underestimation is caused by a type of climate drift, i.e., “initial shock.” This study analyzes the source of the cold surface temperature from the perspective of energy balance and attempts to reduce the surface temperature drift by tuning the relative humidity threshold for low cloud.