Opportunity: Earth System Modeling

DOE’s ESM Program supports the development, coupling and testing of global climate model systems. This includes atmospheric dynamics, clouds and chemistry; ocean dynamics and biogeochemistry; sea-ice and dynamic land-ice systems; land hydrology and biogeochemistry; and representations of human activities that have important interactions with climate. ESM also supports the application of advanced algorithmic and computing methods to optimize the climate model performance on leadership computer systems. The newest climate components as part of ACME are based on variable (atmosphere) as well as irregular (ocean, ice and land) grids. Sophisticated frameworks to test, analyze, calibrate, visualize and validate model results are currently under development, in order to calibrate the model against measurements. A critical scientific challenge is to maximize model performance, by identifying the optimal combination of model resolution and process representation that provides information on climate trends, variabilities, extremes, and tipping points, of most interest. The ultimate goal of the ESM program, and the ACME system, is to understand the interdependencies of climate components, so that simulations of regional and global climate change exhibit a high degree of confidence and certainty, over decadal to centennial time scales. The ESM Program works closely with several other programs within BER. ESM’s atmospheric and terrestrial component developments benefit from the detailed field and process research for atmospheric and terrestrial systems performed by the Atmospheric System Research (ASR), Earth System Science (ESS) Programs and the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Facility. ESM and the Integrated Assessment Research (IAR) Programs collaborate on the development of coupled human-natural systems as needed for optimal detailed climate simulation (by ESM) and for assessing a broad range of possible coupled human-climate scenarios (by IAR). ESM collabor