Global Atmospheric Models
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AM3
AM3 (Donner et al., 2011), the atmospheric component of the GFDL coupled
model CM3, was designed with an awareness of key emerging issues in climate
science, including aerosol-cloud interactions in climate and climate change,
chemistry-climate feedbacks, land and ocean carbon cycles and their
interactions with climate change, and decadal prediction. It is GFDL's
first global atmospheric model to include cloud-aerosol interactions, with
20 interactive aerosol species. AM3 includes interactive tropospheric and
stratospheric chemistry (85 species). AM3 uses emissions to drive its
chemistry and aerosols. Its inclusion of stratospheric chemistry and
dynamics will enable possible interactions between the stratosphere and
troposphere on interannual scales to be included in future studies of
decadal predictability. Its stratosphere has increased vertical resolution
over AM2, with the uppermost level at about 1 Pascal. AM3's improved
simulation of Amazon precipitation will enhance future coupling into an
earth-system model. Read more...
AM3 Code Released March 2012
The code for this model is publicly available.
HiRAM
HiRAM, the GFDL global HIgh Resolution Atmospheric Model, was developed with a goal of providing an improved representation of significant weather events in a global climate model. Our intention was to produce a model capable of simulating the statistics of tropical storms, with sufficient fidelity that it can be used with confidence to study the causes of year-to-year variability in storm activity, recent trends in activity, as well as the predictability of the Atlantic hurricane season. As the credibility of the model improves, based on comparisons with observations, we will apply it to study the effects of global warming on tropical storms. Read more...
HiRAM Code Released April 2012
The code for this model is publicly available.
CMIP Experiments with HiRAM
Simulations with two HiRAM models have been provided to the CMIP5
archive. For HiRAM-C180, the grid has 180 x 180 points on each face,
and for HiRAM-C360, it has 360 x 360 points.
These simulations consist, first of all, of controls using the 1979-2008 period with observed sea surface temperatures and sea ice cover. We currently have deposited data from three C180 controls and two C360 controls.
These controls are themselves useful for diagnostic and attribution studies. We then took estimates, from the CM3 and ESM2M coupled models, of the anomalies in ocean temperature and sea ice cover between this control period and a 10 year period centered on 2030 and on a 10-year period centered on 2095, for the 4.5 and 8.5 RCP scenarios, and added these anomalies to the observed boundary conditions in the control simulations. Several realizations were generated for each case. These anomalies do not contain interannual variability, so, for example, the ENSO variability in the future simulations is assumed to be the same as in the control runs. For all future simulations we used the ENSO variability of the last 10 years of the control simulation (1999-2008).
To obtain CMIP5 HiRAM data, click here.
Model History
Click here for a brief history of atmospheric modeling at GFDL
