SGER: Construction of 'Deep' Paleoclimate Community Climate System Model (CCSM) Simulations

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This grant will support the PI to explore, demonstrate, and document the process of performing fully coupled Community Climate System Model - 3 (CCSM-3) investigations of 'deep' paleoclimates, periods in Earth's past when boundary conditions--i.e. topographies, vegetation distributions, trace gas concentrations, orbital parameters--were substantially different than modern. The PI will work to inform the paleoclimate community how to most effectively take advantage of the CCSM for paleoclimate simulations. He will document potential pitfalls in the code. He will describe how to set up boundary and initial conditions, and will test two or more of the accelerated spin-up techniques that have been developed for paleoclimates. The work will be documented with a technical report, a web page, and a web 'blog' of the daily experiences of setting up these experiments. In this sense, the PI will provide an "outreach" service to the paleoclimate communityBroader impacts include the entrainment of the paleoclimate community more fully into the CCSM as a community modeling facility. Over 100 climate scientists, beyond those at the host institution, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, use the CCSM. However, the number of university paleoclimate scientists that use the CCSM is relatively low; most use the model for contemporary climate studies. A graduate student will be supported to help with the project. As a further deliverable, the PI will make himself and his graduate student available for approximately four on-site hands-on workshops to non-NCAR scientific groups interested in using the CCSM-3 for paleoclimate studies.