The future of climate modeling at NCAR

NCAR has a proud and unique tradition of working with scientists from universities, national laboratories, and other research organizations to create, maintain, and distribute “community” climate and weather models that integrate the best available expertise across institutions. This includes the Community Climate System Model (CCSM), the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM), the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF), and various models of intermediate complexity. In this presentation, recent advances in community climate modeling at NCAR will be highlighted, including early results from simulations in support of the next assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. Over the next decade, NCAR and the community must significantly expand the scope of its modeling efforts. This will include advancing the capabilities and fidelity of the CCSM and transitioning it to an Earth System Model capable of investigating new problems and enabling new partnerships, particularly in adaptation and mitigation research. It will also involve development of a first generation community model that seamlessly combines a high resolution regional ocean modeling system (ROMS), WRF and CCSM into a Nested Regional Climate Model (NRCM). By bringing together members of the weather and climate communities interested in regional climate modeling, the NRCM will significantly advance the science required for a wide variety of applications.