PRAC Collaborative Research: Testing Hypotheses about Climate Prediction at Unprecedented Resolutions on the NSF Blue Waters System

本提案涉及将于2011年投入运行的蓝色沃茨计算机系统的临时时间分配，以及支持各合作者与蓝色沃茨项目小组和供应商技术小组进行技术协调的差旅费，项目小组将利用蓝色水域资源进行调查，以检验关于地球气候系统的两个假设。 第一，与云过程和海洋中尺度涡动混合有关的输送通量和其他效应与当代气候模式中使用的参数化中体现的理论推导的平均值有很大不同，这些差异解释了这些模式中的大部分误差。 第二个假设是，更忠实地表示这些涡旋尺度过程将增加气候模型产生的气候的可预测性。 为了验证这些假设，项目团队计划使用三个前沿气候模型进行三组数值实验，社区气候系统模型，一个新版本的社区气候系统模型，包括云过程的创新处理，以及科罗拉多州立大学全球云解析模型。高分辨率模拟还将提供一个数据集，使人们能够研究区域气候的变化，尺度气候演变，并提供有关天气和气候相互作用的信息。拟议的项目将回答一个关于当代气候内在可靠性的重要问题这些模型的预测对于理解气候变化的可能影响及其缓解战略至关重要。 它将提高向决策者提供的信息的质量，并扩大其范围，提供更多关于区域气候变化及其对降水影响的信息。 该项目由一个在地球科学研究中代表性不足的人口群体的成员领导。

This proposal is for a provisional allocation of time on the Blue Waters computer system, due to become operational in 2011, and for travel funds to support technical coordination by various collaborators with the Blue Waters project team and vendor technical team.The project team will use Blue Water resources for investigations designed to test two hypotheses about the Earth's climate system. The first is that the transport fluxes and other effects associated with cloud processes and ocean mesoscale eddy mixing are significantly different from the theoretically derived averages embodied in the parameterizations used in current-generation climate models, and that these differences explain a large portion of the errors in these models. The second is the hypothesis that a more faithful representation of these eddy-scale processes will increase the predictability of the climates generated by climate models. To test these hypotheses, the project team plans to perform three sets of numerical experiments using three cutting-edge climate models, the Community Climate System Model, a new version of the Community Climate System Model that includes an innovative treatment of cloud processes, and the Colorado State University Global Cloud-Resolving Model.The proposed, high-resolution simulations will also provide a dataset that will allow study of the variability of regional climate as the global-scale climate evolves and provide information about the interplay of weather and climate.The proposed project will answer an important question about the intrinsic reliability of current generation climate models whose predictions are important for understanding the likely impacts of climate variation and strategies for their mitigation. It will improve the quality of information provided to policy-makers and expand its range, providing more information about regional climate variability and its influence on precipitation. The project is led by a member of a demographic group that is under-represented in geosciences research.