Climate/paleoclimate modelling facility

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The Earth's climate can be defined as a group of interacting systems including the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, cryosphere and geosphere. These interactions are very complex and highly non-linear and thus numerical climate models provide an essential tool in the study of past and future climates. This has led to the development of the UVic Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM) of intermediate complexity, which includes most of the important climate systems while still being computationally efficient.This proposal to the Research Tools and Instruments Grants (RTI) program requests funding for a modelling facility consisting of four desktops, two servers, one 3.5 TB data storage, one server rack and one uninterruptable power supply. The computing facility will be used to improve and utilize the UVic ESCM. As the UVic ESCM is used by modelling groups around the world, model development and evaluation will not only benefit my own research program but also an international community.My research aims for a better understanding of past and future climate changes. The fundamental scientific questions I wish to address with this new facility are:What role do terrestrial biogeochemical climate feedbacks play during periods of abrupt climate change?What triggered the abrupt changes seen in isotopic paleoclimate records during the last glacial cycle?These projects involve pioneering work in both climate modelling and the Earth Sciences field in general. They are directed towards improving our basic understanding of terrestrial vegetation, the global carbon cycle (including the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles) and the effect of ocean circulation on past and present climate variability/change. Such understanding and predictions are of direct national interest to Canada, and these topics remain largely unexplored nationally as well as internationally.