Climate Change in the 20th and 21st Centuries

The NCAR Community Climate System Model and Parallel Climate Model have produced one the largest data sets for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its fourth Assessment. There will be some discussion of what is in state-of-art climate models. As a result of this and other climate assessments, most of the climate research science community now believes that mankind is changing the earth's system and that global warming is taking place. The changes are not only reflected in terms of means but also extremes. The new IPCC research findings will be presented along with future computational challenges. It is expected that in the future there will be a need for both terascale and petascale computing, which will allow for higher resolution climate models that have embedded hurricanes and smaller scale weather features as well as viable biogeochemical cycles. Because of concerns of burning fossil fuels there will be special emphasis on better estimates of the Earth's carbon cycle, which is a special concern for the DOE. In order to perform future climate change simulations, the computational methods will necessarily undergo a reexamination. Finally, at the end of talk there will be a discussion of how climate model studiesmore » can aid in future policy options, some of which will address 'geoengineering' the climate system.« less