Toward a physically based gravity wave source parameterization in a general circulation model

Middle atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) must employ a parameterization for small-scale gravity waves (GWs). Such parameterizations typically make very simple assumptions about gravity wave sources, such as uniform distribution in space and time or an arbitrarily specified GW source function. The authors present a configuration of theWholeAtmosphereCommunity ClimateModel (WACCM) that replaces the arbitrarily specifiedGWsource spectrum with GWsource parameterizations. For the nonorographic wave sources, a frontal system and convectiveGWsource parameterization are used. These parameterizations link GW generation to tropospheric quantities calculated by the GCM and provide a model-consistent GW representation. With the newGWsource parameterization, a reasonable middle atmospheric circulation can be obtained and the middle atmospheric circulation is better in several respects than that generated by a typical GW source specification. In particular, the interannual NH stratospheric variability is significantly improved as a result of the source-oriented GW parameterization. It is also shown that the addition of a parameterization to estimate mountain stress due to unresolved orography has a large effect on the frequency of stratospheric sudden warmings in the NH stratosphere by changing the propagation of stationary planetary waves into the polar vortex.