Dynamically combining climate models to “supermodel” the tropical Pacific

We construct an interactive ensemble of two different climate models to improve simulation of key aspects of tropical Pacific climate. Our so-called supermodel is based on two atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) coupled to a single ocean GCM, which is driven by a weighted average of the air-sea fluxes. Optimal weights are determined using a machine learning algorithm to minimize sea surface temperature errors over the tropical Pacific. This coupling strategy synchronizes atmospheric variability in the two AGCMs over the equatorial Pacific, where it improves the representation of ocean-atmosphere interaction and the climate state. In particular, the common double Intertropical Convergence Zone error is suppressed, and the positive Bjerknes feedback improves substantially to match observations well, and the negative heat flux feedback is also much improved. This study supports the concept of supermodeling as a promising multimodel ensemble strategy to improve weather and climate predictions.