Welcome to CCSM










 

Charge of the CCSM Climate Change and Assessment Working Group

The CCSM Climate Change and Assessment Working Group was formed to coordinate climate change simulations of the CCSM. It also has the responsibility to coordinate with the DOE Climate Change Prediction Program-supported climate change simulations. Work is proceeding on using the same model components of the CCSM and the DOE-supported Parallel Climate Model (PCM), so that the models will be essentially the same for climate change simulations. The timescale for the merged model concept is in the order of a year. The climate change ensemble simulations will be part of IPCC, U.S. National Assessment, and CLIVAR coordinated simulations that will allow intercomparisons with other national and international modeling groups. There may be special simulations related to the missions of NSF or DOE.

The specific activities of the working group are as follows:

  • Advise on the specific design of the climate change simulations. For example, help specify the climatic forcing to use in the simulations, such as the changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols, solar variability, and volcanic activity.
  • Advise and plan for statistical analysis of the simulations with an emphasis on detection of climate change.
  • Work with other CCSM working groups to develop model components and a fully coupled climate model that is suitable for climate change simulations.
  • Advise on data availability for the CCSM climate change simulations consistent with the CCSM policy on data. The DOE-supported simulations will have a data availability policy consistent with the DOE Climate Change Prediction Program policy. Some of the CCSM data will be archived at NCAR's Scientific Computing Division and some at DOE's PCMDI.
  • Meet at the CCSM annual summer workshop to report on research related to climate change simulations. Conduct monthly planning meetings at NCAR. A notification of the meeting time will be sent out one week in advance.

It should be noted that performing ensembles of simulations takes a great deal of computer time and the conducting of such simulations often extend over many months to years. Therefore, it will not be necessary for this working group to meet more than once a year.

04/11/00