- About
- The Science
- CLIVAR Frontiers and Imperatives
- Frontier 1: Anthropogenic Climate Change
- Frontier 2: Decadal variability, predictability and prediction
- Frontier 3: Intra-seasonal and seasonal predictability and prediction
- Imperative 1: Improved atmosphere and ocean component models of Earth System Models
- Imperative 2: Data synthesis, analysis, reanalysis and uncertainty
- Imperative 3: Ocean observing system
- Imperative 4: Capacity building
- CLIVAR Endorsed Projects & Activities
- CLIVAR Objectives
- CLIVAR Successes
- CLIVAR Frontiers and Imperatives
- Panels and Working Groups
- Global
- PAGES/CLIVAR Intersection Working Group
- CCl/CLIVAR/JCOMM Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI)
- Global Synthesis and Observations Panel (GSOP)
- WGCM/CLIVAR Working Group on Ocean Model Development (WGOMD)
- Working Group on Seasonal to Interannual Prediction
- Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM)
- Regional
- National Programmes
- Global
- Extremes Cross-Cut
- Calendar
- Resources
- Publications
12th Session of the JSC/CLIVAR Working Group on Coupled Modeling (14 Oct 2008)
The Working Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM) held a historic meeting in Paris, France on 22-24 September 2008 where representatives from 20 of the global coupled climate modeling centres from around the world were invited to hear about the next round of coordinated experiments that were originally proposed by the WGCM/Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES) community in 2006. The modeling groups will commit huge resources over the next two years performing the next climate model intercomparison project (CMIP5). The meeting provided the unique opportunity for the modeling groups to work on reaching a consensus and buy-in to the climate change experiments that WGCM is coordinating, and to discuss ways to maximize the utility of the experiments for the wider scientific community (including CLIVAR, in particular WGSIP, GEWEX, WGNE and AIMES). CMIP5 will provide the framework for climate change modeling research for the next five years and results from these experiments will provide the basis for the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment (AR5).
Climate change is not only a scientific challenge of the first order but also a major technological challenge and PCMDI will again play the leading role in supporting the international climate community as it provides access to hundreds of petabytes of simulation data within the next three to seven years. The Earth System Grid is part of an international federated, distributed data archival and retrieval system called the Earth System Grid Center for Enabling Technology (ESG-CET) and is being developed in partnership with PCMDI to meet the needs of CMIP5.
In addition to serving the coupled modeling community with the coordinated experiments and its data collection and archival needs, the WGCM meeting addressed its other focus topics of improving models, in particular the simulation of cloud and moist processes, and addressing emerging issues including ice sheets and air chemistry. Other major foci for WGCM are regional climate modeling and how this community can best organize itself at an international level and wider modeling issues within WCRP as its remit evolves to address the science questions emerging with the development of the next generation of models in the next decade and beyond.
What became clear at this meeting was that, as the international climate modeling community takes on ever-increasing climate change modeling challenges, WGCM has been able to build tangible linkages through shared activities and direct communication with other groups representing the research communities involved with CMIP5. AIMES (IGBP) has worked with WGCM to formulate the CMIP5 experimental design. WGSIP and WGCM have formed a joint contact group to oversee the decadal predictability/prediction part of CMIP5. WGNE and GCSS, through shared interests with WGCM in model development, processes, and parameterizations, have a joint stake in the cloud and moist process part of CMIP5. WGCM is now linked to the IPCC Working Group Three integrated assessment modelers (IAMs) through the IAM Consortium where WGCM is working with them to formulate and coordinate the new RCP mitigation scenarios. SPARC and AC&C are providing consultation on the chemistry and aerosol aspects of the long term experiments with the new earth system models. Thus, as the models have become more complex with higher resolution, and the climate change modeling problem now has short term initialized aspects and long term earth system model components, the various panels and working groups are now functioning not so much as separate independent entities, but more as a network of communities through the coordinating and clearing house role of WGCM.
The presentations and pre-meeting reports are available here: http://www.clivar.org/organization/wgcm/wgcm-12/wgcm12.php
