Déqué, M., C. Dreveton, A. Braun and D. Cariolle,
1994: The ARPEGE/IFS atmosphere model: A contribution to the French community
climate modelling at Meteo-France. Climate Dynamics, 10,
249-266.
A new atmospheric model has been developed jointly by Meteo-France
and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) under
the acronym ARPEGE (Action de Recherche Petite Echelle Grand Echelle, which
means research project on small and large scales) and IFS (integrated forecast
system). This model includes, inter alia, an atmospheric general circulation
model (GCM) which is intended by the French climate modelling community
to be used for studyingthe anthropogenic climate impact. A preliminary
version of this model has been available since 1992. This paper describes
its main characteristics. Three 10-year integrations of this model having
spectral horizontal resolutions of T21, T42, and T79 have been performed
using prescribed monthly mean sea surface temperatures (SST) observed from
1979 until 1988. The results of these integrations are presented and compared
with the observed climatology. The comparison is made for the winter (DJF)
and summer (JJA) periods. It is shown that the model is capable of reproducing
the observed climatology in a generally successful manner.