Welcome to CCSM

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CCSM Project

About CCSM

CCSM belongs to an elite category of computer-based simulation models known as general-circulation models. Such models use mathematical formulas to recreate the chemical and physical processes that drive Earth's climate. What emerges from trillions of computer calculations is a picture of the world's climate in all its complexity. [More...] [CCSM Brochure]

CCSM wins 2009 CO-LABS Governor's Award for Research Impact

The Community Climate System ModelCommunity Climate System Model (CCSM) is one of the world's leading climate models. CCSM experiments provide insights into many aspects of the Earth's climate system by simulating the complex influences of the oceans, atmosphere, land surface, and sea ice on global climate. Using the CCSM, scientists are able to project how temperatures and precipitation are likely to change in response to continued increases in greenhouse gas concentrations. The model, developed over the past decade at NCAR through a large collaboration of scientists, uses open source code and data making it freely available for use by a variety of entities. Predictions from this model are used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). [award]

Publication News

The computational future for climate and Earth system models: on the path to petaflop and beyond
The development of the climate and Earth system models has had a long history, starting with the building of individual atmospheric, ocean, sea ice, land vegetation, biogeochemical, glacial and ecological model components. [article] [abstract]

Predicting 21st-century polar bear habitat distribution from global climate models
Projections of polar bear (Ursus maritimus) sea ice habitat distribution in the polar basin during the 21st century were developed to understand the consequences of anticipated sea ice reductions on polar bear populations. [article] [abstract]