NOAA's Ocean Climate Change Web Portal

This is an experimetal web-tool designed to explore changes projected in the oceans by coupled climate models' CMIP5 experiments (historical, RCP8.5 and RCP4.5).

Variables:

Current variables available are divided in three categories : the physical atmospheric, the physical, and the biogeochemical oceanic variables.
The physical atmospheric variables are near-surface air temperature, precipitation, surface net heat flux, surface upward latent heat flux, surface upward sensible heat flux, net surface downward shortwave radiation, and net surface downward longwave radiation.
The physical oceanic variables are sea surface temperature, sea surface salinity, sea ice percentage, bottom temperature, bottom salinity, temperature at 30m depth, temperature at 50m depth, temperature at 100m depth, temperature at 200m depth, temperature at 500 depth, salinity at 30m depth, salinity at 30m depth, salinity at 100m depth, salinity at 200m depth, salinity at 500m depth, heat content between the surface and 300m depth, heat content between the surface and 700m depth, heat content between the surface and 2000m depth, static stability between the surface and 50m depth, static stability between the surface and 200m depth, eastward near-surface wind speed, near-surface wind speed, westward near-surface wind speed, surface domnward x-stress, surface downward y-stress, Ekman pumping, and magnitude of sea surface temperature gradient.
The biogeochemical oceanic variables are sea surface pH, primary productivity, sea surface oxygen, sea surface chlorophyll, total alkalinity at surface, and dissolved inorganic carbon concentration.

All data has been interpolated to a 1 degree by 1 degree grid to facilitate inter-comparison. Atmospheric grids were interpolated bilinearly, while oceanic grids were interpolated by a natural neighbor method.

Basics Options:

Users can select individual models or an average of all models. There are also choices to be made for season, 21st century time period, and region. Depending on what statistic is chosen, a 4-panel plot will be created. The upper left panel will show the climate from the historical experiment for the period 1956-2005. The upper right will show a measure (depending on statistic chosen) of the change in climate from the historical reference period to the 21st century time period (RCP8.5 or RCP4.5 experiment). The lower left panel will show some measure (depending on statistic chosen) of the variability in the historical reference period. Lastly, the lower right panel will show some measure of the change in variability of the 21st century period relative to the historical period.

Statistic Options:

There are 4 different options for statistics: anomaly, standard anomaly (average of historical standard deviation), standard anomaly (ensemble standard deviation), and ensemble spread of future change.

Anomaly

If the user selects "Anomaly" as the statistic: The climate change panel (upper right) will show the difference in the mean climate in the future time period (RCP8.5) compared to the historical reference period. The climate variability panel (lower left) will show the average inter-annual (de-trended) standard deviation for the historical reference period (1956-2005) (or just a single model's historical variability). The change in variability (lower right panel) is expressed as a ratio of the de-trended variance (average or single model) in the future, divided by the past.

Standard Anomaly (average historical)

If the user selects "Standard Anomaly (average historical)" as the statistic: The climate change panel (upper right) will show the difference in the mean climate in the future time period (RCP8.5) compared to the historical reference period, but the anomalies will be standardized (normalized) by the de-trended inter-annual standard deviation in the historical period (average of all the models or single model). The two bottom panels will be the same as when "anomaly" is selected. The climate variability panel (lower left) will show the average inter-annual (de-trended) standard deviation for the historical reference period (1956-2005) (or just a single model's historical variability). The change in variability (lower right panel) is expressed as a ratio of the de-trended variance (average or single model) in the future, divided by the past.

Standard Anomaly (ensemble spread)

If "standard anomaly (ensemble spread)" is chosen as the statistic: The anomalies will be standardized by the standard deviation of the mean climate (for the historical period) of all the models. The lower left panel will show this ensemble standard deviation and the lower right panel will show the variance ratio of the ensemble spread in future, divided by the past.

Ensemble Spread of Future Change

If "ensemble spread of future change" is chosen as the statistic: The climate change panel (upper right) will show the difference in the mean climate in the future time period (RCP8.5) compared to the historical reference period. The lower left panel will show the ensemble standard deviation (spread) of the future change and the lower right panel will show the ratio of the mean change, divided by the ensemble spread of the change.

More Information

More information on the CMIP5 historical and RCP8.5 experiments can be found here:

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