From climate models to informing policy decisions: the end-to-end importance of an effective research infrastructure

<p>The last few decades have seen a range of advances in climate science and consequential policy initiatives at both national and international levels. These advances have been built on the back of progress in modelling and in part been enabled by the global data sharing initiative - the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) - which has underpinned recent phases of the World Climate Research Programme's Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects.&#160;&#160;</p><p>The ESGF itself consists of data nodes deployed by individual modelling centres and a backbone of software development and services delivered by a few core institutions. Within Europe, along with some shared development of model components, these core ESGF software development and services are coordinated by the European Network on Earth System Modelling (ENES) and supported by the H2020 IS-ENES Phase 3 research infrastructure project.&#160;&#160;</p><p>We provide an historical overview on advances in policy-relevant science, such as the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), that have been enabled by long-term underpinning development and funding of the ENES and ESGF infrastructure. We illustrate the recent shift of research funding from physical science objectives alone towards funding services to society (and the necessary underpinning research). We stress the potential dangers of underfunding research infrastructures that need to be simultaneously flexible and reliable enough to serve both ongoing basic research and the growing societal objectives, as emphasised by the development of climate services such as Copernicus Climate Change Service. We conclude by presenting some steps towards sustaining such research infrastructure in the context of the ENES and the possible futures of climate science.</p>

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The Benefits of Global High Resolution for Climate Simulation: Process Understanding and the Enabling of Stakeholder Decisions at the Regional Scale

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society ◽

10.1175/bams-d-15-00320.1 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 99 (11) ◽

pp. 2341-2359 ◽

Cited By ~ 44

Author(s):

M. J. Roberts ◽

P. L. Vidale ◽

C. Senior ◽

H. T. Hewitt ◽

C. Bates ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Variability ◽

Time Scales ◽

Climate Models ◽

Water Cycle ◽

Regional Scale ◽

Coupled Model ◽

Convective Precipitation ◽

Climate Simulation ◽

Intergovernmental Panel

AbstractThe time scales of the Paris Climate Agreement indicate urgent action is required on climate policies over the next few decades, in order to avoid the worst risks posed by climate change. On these relatively short time scales the combined effect of climate variability and change are both key drivers of extreme events, with decadal time scales also important for infrastructure planning. Hence, in order to assess climate risk on such time scales, we require climate models to be able to represent key aspects of both internally driven climate variability and the response to changing forcings. In this paper we argue that we now have the modeling capability to address these requirements—specifically with global models having horizontal resolutions considerably enhanced from those typically used in previous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) exercises. The improved representation of weather and climate processes in such models underpins our enhanced confidence in predictions and projections, as well as providing improved forcing to regional models, which are better able to represent local-scale extremes (such as convective precipitation). We choose the global water cycle as an illustrative example because it is governed by a chain of processes for which there is growing evidence of the benefits of higher resolution. At the same time it comprises key processes involved in many of the expected future climate extremes (e.g., flooding, drought, tropical and midlatitude storms).

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An Overview of CMIP5 and the Experiment Design

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society ◽

10.1175/bams-d-11-00094.1 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 93 (4) ◽

pp. 485-498 ◽

Cited By ~ 8089

Author(s):

Karl E. Taylor ◽

Ronald J. Stouffer ◽

Gerald A. Meehl

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Models ◽

Global Climate ◽

Experiment Design ◽

Global Climate Models ◽

Model Output ◽

Earth System ◽

Intergovernmental Panel ◽

System Models ◽

Earth System Models

The fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) will produce a state-of-the- art multimodel dataset designed to advance our knowledge of climate variability and climate change. Researchers worldwide are analyzing the model output and will produce results likely to underlie the forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Unprecedented in scale and attracting interest from all major climate modeling groups, CMIP5 includes “long term” simulations of twentieth-century climate and projections for the twenty-first century and beyond. Conventional atmosphere–ocean global climate models and Earth system models of intermediate complexity are for the first time being joined by more recently developed Earth system models under an experiment design that allows both types of models to be compared to observations on an equal footing. Besides the longterm experiments, CMIP5 calls for an entirely new suite of “near term” simulations focusing on recent decades and the future to year 2035. These “decadal predictions” are initialized based on observations and will be used to explore the predictability of climate and to assess the forecast system's predictive skill. The CMIP5 experiment design also allows for participation of stand-alone atmospheric models and includes a variety of idealized experiments that will improve understanding of the range of model responses found in the more complex and realistic simulations. An exceptionally comprehensive set of model output is being collected and made freely available to researchers through an integrated but distributed data archive. For researchers unfamiliar with climate models, the limitations of the models and experiment design are described.

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Controls on the Diversity in Climate Model Projections of Early Summer Drying over Southern Africa

Journal of Climate ◽

10.1175/jcli-d-18-0463.1 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 32 (12) ◽

pp. 3707-3725 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

C. Munday ◽

R. Washington

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Southern Africa ◽

Large Scale ◽

Climate Models ◽

Climate Model ◽

Atmospheric Stability ◽

Coupled Model ◽

Early Summer ◽

Intergovernmental Panel ◽

Surface Temperature Change

Abstract Ninety-five percent of climate models contributing to phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) project early summer [October–December (OND)] rainfall declines over subtropical southern Africa by the end of the century, under all emissions forcing pathways. The intermodel consensus underlies the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment that rainfall declines are “likely” and implies that significant climate change adaptation is needed. However, model consensus is not necessarily a good indicator of confidence, especially given that there is an order of magnitude difference in the scale of rainfall decline among models in OND (from <10 mm season−1 to ~100 mm season−1), and that the CMIP5 ensemble systematically overestimates present-day OND precipitation over subtropical southern Africa (in some models by a factor of 2). In this paper we investigate the uncertainty in the OND drying signal by evaluating the climate mechanisms that underlie the diversity in model rainfall projections. Models projecting the highest-magnitude drying simulate the largest increases in tropospheric stability over subtropical southern Africa associated with anomalous upper-level subsidence, reduced evaporation, and amplified surface temperature change. Intermodel differences in rainfall projections are in turn related to the large-scale adjustment of the tropical atmosphere to emissions forcing: models with the strongest relative warming of the northern tropical sea surface temperatures compared to the tropical mean warming simulate the largest rainfall declines. The models with extreme rainfall declines also tend to simulate large present-day biases in rainfall and in atmospheric stability, leading the authors to suggest that projections of high-magnitude drying require further critical attention.

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Water Budgets of Managed Forests in Northeast Germany under Climate Change—Results from a Model Study on Forest Monitoring Sites

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app11052403 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (5) ◽

pp. 2403

Author(s):

Daniel Ziche ◽

Winfried Riek ◽

Alexander Russ ◽

Rainer Hentschel ◽

Jan Martin

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Models ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Coupled Model ◽

Regional Climate Models ◽

Realistic Model ◽

Forest Monitoring ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

Historical Time ◽

Time Period

To develop measures to reduce the vulnerability of forests to drought, it is necessary to estimate specific water balances in sites and to estimate their development with climate change scenarios. We quantified the water balance of seven forest monitoring sites in northeast Germany for the historical time period 1961–2019, and for climate change projections for the time period 2010–2100. We used the LWF-BROOK90 hydrological model forced with historical data, and bias-adjusted data from two models of the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) downscaled with regional climate models under the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) 2.6 and 8.5. Site-specific monitoring data were used to give a realistic model input and to calibrate and validate the model. The results revealed significant trends (evapotranspiration, dry days (actual/potential transpiration < 0.7)) toward drier conditions within the historical time period and demonstrate the extreme conditions of 2018 and 2019. Under RCP8.5, both models simulate an increase in evapotranspiration and dry days. The response of precipitation to climate change is ambiguous, with increasing precipitation with one model. Under RCP2.6, both models do not reveal an increase in drought in 2071–2100 compared to 1990–2019. The current temperature increase fits RCP8.5 simulations, suggesting that this scenario is more realistic than RCP2.6.

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Simulations of the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period using the NASA/GISS ModelE2-R Earth System Model

Geoscientific Model Development Discussions ◽

10.5194/gmdd-5-2811-2012 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 2811-2842 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

M. A. Chandler ◽

L. E. Sohl ◽

J. A. Jonas ◽

H. J. Dowsett

Keyword(s):

North Atlantic ◽

Climate Models ◽

Climate Model ◽

Geographic Region ◽

Earth System Model ◽

Warm Period ◽

System Model ◽

Earth System ◽

Intergovernmental Panel ◽

Future Global Warming

Abstract. Climate reconstructions of the mid-Pliocene Warm Period (mPWP) bear many similarities to aspects of future global warming as projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In particular, marine and terrestrial paleoclimate data point to high latitude temperature amplification, with associated decreases in sea ice and land ice and altered vegetation distributions that show expansion of warmer climate biomes into higher latitudes. NASA GISS climate models have been used to study the Pliocene climate since the USGS PRISM project first identified that the mid-Pliocene North Atlantic sea surface temperatures were anomalously warm. Here we present the most recent simulations of the Pliocene using the AR5/CMIP5 version of the GISS Earth System Model known as ModelE2-R. These simulations constitute the NASA contribution to the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP) Experiment 2. Many findings presented here corroborate results from other PlioMIP multi-model ensemble papers, but we also emphasize features in the ModelE2-R simulations that are unlike the ensemble means. We provide discussion of features that show considerable improvement compared with simulations from previous versions of the NASA GISS models, improvement defined here as simulation results that more closely resemble the ocean core data as well as the PRISM3D reconstructions of the mid-Pliocene climate. In some regions even qualitative agreement between model results and paleodata are an improvement over past studies, but the dramatic warming in the North Atlantic and Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian Sea in these new simulations is by far the most accurate portrayal ever of this key geographic region by the GISS climate model. Our belief is that continued development of key physical routines in the atmospheric model, along with higher resolution and recent corrections to mixing parameterizations in the ocean model, have led to an Earth System Model that will produce more accurate projections of future climate.

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Pan-spectral observing system simulation experiments of shortwave reflectance and long-wave radiance for climate model evaluation

Geoscientific Model Development ◽

10.5194/gmd-8-1943-2015 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 8 (7) ◽

pp. 1943-1954 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

D. R. Feldman ◽

W. D. Collins ◽

J. L. Paige

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Model ◽

Coupled Model ◽

Climate System ◽

Spectral Measurements ◽

Intergovernmental Panel ◽

Climate System Model ◽

Detection And Attribution ◽

Long Wave ◽

Hadley Centre

Abstract. Top-of-atmosphere (TOA) spectrally resolved shortwave reflectances and long-wave radiances describe the response of the Earth's surface and atmosphere to feedback processes and human-induced forcings. In order to evaluate proposed long-duration spectral measurements, we have projected 21st Century changes from the Community Climate System Model (CCSM3.0) conducted for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A2 Emissions Scenario onto shortwave reflectance spectra from 300 to 2500 nm and long-wave radiance spectra from 2000 to 200 cm−1 at 8 nm and 1 cm−1 resolution, respectively. The radiative transfer calculations have been rigorously validated against published standards and produce complementary signals describing the climate system forcings and feedbacks. Additional demonstration experiments were performed with the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate (MIROC5) and Hadley Centre Global Environment Model version 2 Earth System (HadGEM2-ES) models for the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) scenario. The calculations contain readily distinguishable signatures of low clouds, snow/ice, aerosols, temperature gradients, and water vapour distributions. The goal of this effort is to understand both how climate change alters reflected solar and emitted infrared spectra of the Earth and determine whether spectral measurements enhance our detection and attribution of climate change. This effort also presents a path forward to understand the characteristics of hyperspectral observational records needed to confront models and inline instrument simulation. Such simulation will enable a diverse set of comparisons between model results from coupled model intercomparisons and existing and proposed satellite instrument measurement systems.

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Potential Impact of Climate Change on Schistosomiasis: A Global Assessment Attempt

Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease ◽

10.3390/tropicalmed3040117 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 3 (4) ◽

pp. 117 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Guo-Jing Yang ◽

Robert Bergquist

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Coupled Model ◽

Maximum Temperature ◽

Intergovernmental Panel ◽

Meteorological Model ◽

Ambient Temperatures ◽

Global Circulation ◽

Global Circulation Models ◽

Parasite Stage ◽

Near Future

Based on an ensemble of global circulation models (GCMs), four representative concentration pathways (RCPs) and several ongoing and planned Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIPs), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that global, average temperatures will increase by at least 1.5 °C in the near future and more by the end of the century if greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions are not genuinely tempered. While the RCPs are indicative of various amounts of GHGs in the atmosphere the CMIPs are designed to improve the workings of the GCMs. We chose RCP4.5 which represented a medium GHG emission increase and CMIP5, the most recently completed CMIP phase. Combining this meteorological model with a biological counterpart model accounted for replication and survival of the snail intermediate host as well as maturation of the parasite stage inside the snail at different ambient temperatures. The potential geographical distribution of the three main schistosome species: Schistosoma japonicum, S. mansoni and S. haematobium was investigated with reference to their different transmission capabilities at the monthly mean temperature, the maximum temperature of the warmest month(s) and the minimum temperature of the coldest month(s). The set of six maps representing the predicted situations in 2021–2050 and 2071–2100 for each species mainly showed increased transmission areas for all three species but they also left room for potential shrinkages in certain areas.

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Robust increase of Indian monsoon rainfall and its variability under future warming in CMIP-6 models

10.5194/esd-2020-80 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Anja Katzenberger ◽

Jacob Schewe ◽

Julia Pongratz ◽

Anders Levermann

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Climate Models ◽

Monsoon Rainfall ◽

Global Climate ◽

Coupled Model ◽

Global Climate Models ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Global Mean Temperature ◽

Almost All

Abstract. The Indian summer monsoon is an integral part of the global climate system. As its seasonal rainfall plays a crucial role in India's agriculture and shapes many other aspects of life, it affects the livelihood of a fifth of the world's population. It is therefore highly relevant to assess its change under potential future climate change. Global climate models within the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP-5) indicated a consistent increase in monsoon rainfall and its variability under global warming. Since the range of the results of CMIP-5 was still large and the confidence in the models was limited due to partly poor representation of observed rainfall, the updates within the latest generation of climate models in CMIP-6 are of interest. Here, we analyse 32 models of the latest CMIP-6 exercise with regard to their annual mean monsoon rainfall and its variability. All of these models show a substantial increase in June-to-September (JJAS) mean rainfall under unabated climate change (SSP5-8.5) and most do also for the other three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways analyzed (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0). Moreover, the simulation ensemble indicates a linear dependence of rainfall on global mean temperature with high agreement between the models and independent of the SSP; the multi-model mean for JJAS projects an increase of 0.33 mm/day and 5.3 % per degree of global warming. This is significantly higher than in the CMIP-5 projections. Most models project that the increase will contribute to the precipitation especially in the Himalaya region and to the northeast of the Bay of Bengal, as well as the west coast of India. Interannual variability is found to be increasing in the higher-warming scenarios by almost all models. The CMIP-6 simulations largely confirm the findings from CMIP-5 models, but show an increased robustness across models with reduced uncertainties and updated magnitudes towards a stronger increase in monsoon rainfall.

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Advances in Collaborative Documentation Support for CMIP6

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19636 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Charlotte Pascoe ◽

David Hassell ◽

Martina Stockhause ◽

Mark Greenslade

Keyword(s):

Science Communication ◽

Scientific Community ◽

Climate Models ◽

Coupled Model ◽

Automatic Generation ◽

Earth System ◽

The Earth ◽

Data Citation ◽

On Line ◽

Intercomparison Project

<div>The Earth System Documentation (ES-DOC) project aims to nurture an ecosystem of tools & services in support of Earth System documentation creation, analysis and dissemination. Such an ecosystem enables the scientific community to better understand and utilise Earth system model data.</div><div>The ES-DOC infrastructure for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) modelling groups to describe their climate models and make the documentation available on-line has been available for 18 months, and more recently the automatic generation of documentation of every published simulation has meant that every CMIP6 dataset within the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) is now immediately connected to the ES-DOC description of the entire workflow that created it, via a &#8220;further info URL&#8221;.</div><div>The further info URL is a landing page from which all of the relevant CMIP6 documentation relevant to the data may be accessed, including experimental design, model formulation and ensemble description, as well as providing links to the data citation information.</div><div>These DOI landing pages are part of the Citation Service, provided by DKRZ. Data citation information is also available independently through the ESGF Search portal or in the DataCite search or Google&#8217;s dataset search. It provides users of CMIP6 data with the formal citation that should accompany any use of the datasets that comprise their analysis.</div><div>ES-DOC services and the Citation Service form a CMIP6 project&#160; collaboration, and depend upon structured documentation provided by the scientific community. Structured scientific metadata has an important role in science communication, however it&#8217;s creation and collation exacts a cost in time, energy and attention.&#160; We discuss progress towards a balance between the ease of information collection and the complexity of our information handling structures.</div><div>&#160;</div><div>CMIP6: https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/CMIP6/</div><div>ES-DOC: https://es-doc.org/</div><div>Further Info URL: https://es-doc.org/cmip6-ensembles-further-info-url</div><div> <p>Citation Service: http://cmip6cite.wdc-climate.de</p> </div>

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Twenty-First-Century Compatible CO2 Emissions and Airborne Fraction Simulated by CMIP5 Earth System Models under Four Representative Concentration Pathways

Journal of Climate ◽

10.1175/jcli-d-12-00554.1 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 26 (13) ◽

pp. 4398-4413 ◽

Cited By ~ 183

Author(s):

Chris Jones ◽

Eddy Robertson ◽

Vivek Arora ◽

Pierre Friedlingstein ◽

Elena Shevliakova ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Carbon Cycle ◽

Climate Models ◽

Coupled Model ◽

Co2 Concentration ◽

Atmospheric Composition ◽

System Component ◽

Anthropogenic Emissions ◽

Carbon Uptake ◽

Earth System ◽

Representative Concentration Pathways

Abstract The carbon cycle is a crucial Earth system component affecting climate and atmospheric composition. The response of natural carbon uptake to CO2 and climate change will determine anthropogenic emissions compatible with a target CO2 pathway. For phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), four future representative concentration pathways (RCPs) have been generated by integrated assessment models (IAMs) and used as scenarios by state-of-the-art climate models, enabling quantification of compatible carbon emissions for the four scenarios by complex, process-based models. Here, the authors present results from 15 such Earth system GCMs for future changes in land and ocean carbon storage and the implications for anthropogenic emissions. The results are consistent with the underlying scenarios but show substantial model spread. Uncertainty in land carbon uptake due to differences among models is comparable with the spread across scenarios. Model estimates of historical fossil-fuel emissions agree well with reconstructions, and future projections for representative concentration pathway 2.6 (RCP2.6) and RCP4.5 are consistent with the IAMs. For high-end scenarios (RCP6.0 and RCP8.5), GCMs simulate smaller compatible emissions than the IAMs, indicating a larger climate–carbon cycle feedback in the GCMs in these scenarios. For the RCP2.6 mitigation scenario, an average reduction of 50% in emissions by 2050 from 1990 levels is required but with very large model spread (14%–96%). The models also disagree on both the requirement for sustained negative emissions to achieve the RCP2.6 CO2 concentration and the success of this scenario to restrict global warming below 2°C. All models agree that the future airborne fraction depends strongly on the emissions profile with higher airborne fraction for higher emissions scenarios.

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