Description:

At kilometer-scale grid spacings, partly resolving various terrestrial processes and heterogeneity in states and fluxes facilitates more realistic modeling of two-way feedbacks from the subsurface across the land surface and boundary layer to the top of the atmosphere and contribute to more skillful weather and climate simulations. Examples of processes and feedbacks include groundwater and vegetation dynamics, snow-ice processes, soil moisture-precipitation feedbacks, ocean-atmosphere coupling, and also human interventions and their impacts.  However, using kilometer-scale models in the context of seamless weather prediction and climate projections constitutes a considerable challenge due to intensive computational and data demands. This session invites contributions in advancing the physical and biogeochemical process representation and coupling in Earth System Models from weather prediction to climate time scales; incorporation of impacts and human interventions, such as water use and land use; and novel computational and big data approaches including challenges and opportunities presented by next-generation supercomputers. Inspiring applications and analyses of Earth System Models are also invited, for example, in the field of climate services as well as impact modelling, on the added value of kilometer-scale resolution, and tackling technical and scientific challenges in the grey-zone related to land-atmosphere and ocean-atmosphere exchanges. The overarching goal of the session is to collate perspectives from the physical, biogeochemical, impact modeling, and computational communities, to stimulate discussions on future scientific and technological leaps as a basis for next-generation weather and climate products and services.