Bringing Together the Observational and Modeling Communities

A recent priority for the Polar Climate Working Group of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) has been to come up with innovative ways to bring the observational and modeling communities together. These ideas will allow for more robust validation of climate model simulations, the development and implementation of more physically-based model parameterizations, improved data assimilation capabilities, and the better use of models to design and implement field experiments. While these goals are quite general, turning them into specific topics can be dependent on numerous details and complexities. I will discuss examples of the better integration of models and observations on the topics of snow on sea ice and ice thickness. These topics have been guided by workshops that we have hosted in these areas. I will also discuss how the better integration of observations and models have played a role in the new version of the Community Earth System Model, due to be released in early 2017 and how enhanced interactions with the observational community will contribute to model developments and validation moving forward.