Climate & Earth Science
NERSC users have made significant and long-lasting improvements to the scientific basis for assessing the potential consequences of climatic changes and costs of alternative response options. Efforts using higher resolution, improved physical, chemical, and biological process representations, and more precise uncertainty estimates continue to explore potential ecological, social, and economic implications of climatic change.
There has has also been a significant increase in the number of computational studies involving the application of molecular dynamics in the geosciences. These wide ranging investigations have a common emphasis on understanding the structure and behavior of natural materials at temperatures and pressures associated with the Earth’s crust and interior. A surprising outcome is the discovery of new characteristics of minerals long known to be amongst the most abundant in the Earth's mantle.
Representative examples of research in these vital areas appear below.
Carbon Sequestration
Carbon sequestration is a geoengineering technique suggested as a possible mitigation strategy for global warming. A new adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) technique developed at NERSC improves simulation accuracy and allows researchers to capture complex, long-term behavior that cannot be deduced in 2-D simulations. Read More »
Climate Change Simulations with CCSM & CESM
NCAR scientists continue to perform fundamental research into understanding processes that influence the natural variability of the earth’s climate system, and relate those processes to possible future manifestations of anthropogenic climate change. Read More »
20th Century Reanalysis Project
This project uses an Ensemble Kalman filter to reconstruct global weather conditions in six-hour intervals from 1871 to the present. The aim is to validate tools for future projections by successfully recreating -- and explaining -- climate anomalies of the past. Read More »
