The Program also contributes to the
Climate Variability and Change element of the U.S. Climate
Change Science Program (CCSP), and coordinates its activities with
the climate modeling programs at other federal agencies, particularly the
National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The climate modeling program comprises two components: the core Climate Change Prediction Program, and the climate applications of the DOE Office of Science’s (SC’s) Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) Program. SciDAC supports projects that utilize advanced numerical methods needed to undertake climate simulation on high-performance computing platforms. Activities are seamlessly integrated between SciDAC and the rest of the program.
Grants: The modeling program supports grants through the competitive peer-reviewed process. Such projects are devoted to addressing critical emerging issues in climate change science, including abrupt climate change.
Climate Model Development and Evaluation: Development and application projects mainly focus on the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) a community modeling program based at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The CCSM, jointly supported by the NSF and the DOE is a coupled climate model that provides state-of-the-science climate change simulations of the Earth's past, present, and future climate. The Climate, Ocean and Sea Ice Modeling Project (COSIM) project provides the ongoing development and distribution ofthe ocean, sea-ice components of the CCSM. An ice-sheet model is also currently under development.
The multi-lab SciDAC CCSM Consortium Project undertakes basic development of ocean, sea ice, aerosols, atmospheric chemistry, and biogeochemistry models. It also addresses climate application needs of software engineering for simulations on petascale and exascale computers. Work is also being undertaken on global cloud resolving modeling under a SciDAC project at Colorado State University.
The Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) develops improved methods and tools for the diagnosis and intercomparison of climate and earth system models.PCMDI provides major facilities for archiving climate model output, including frequently-analyzed variables such as those used for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports. PCMDI makes such model output readily accessible to the climate modeling community.
Climate Simulation and Prediction:
Multi-century simulations using the CCSM model are undertaken by the DOE Climate Change
Project at NCAR. The analysis of such simulations provide insights
into how natural and anthropogenic forcings impact the coupled climate system.
Abrupt Climate Change:
The multi-lab Investigation
of the Magnitudes and Probabilities of Abrupt Climate TransitionS (IMPACTS)
project is examining both attribution of
recent past abrupt climate change, as well as potential future abrupt climate
change based on climate change projections using dynamical coupled climate
models. University projects, including collaborative projects with IMPACTS, are
addressing various aspects of abrupt climate change.
Dr. Renu R. Joseph
Climate and Environmental Sciences Division, SC-23.1
Department of Energy, GTN Bldg.
1000 Independence Ave, SW
Washington, DC 20585-1290
Phone: (301) 903-9237
Fax: (301) 903-8519
Email: renu.joseph@science.doe.gov