U.S. Annual Climate Modeling Summit (CMS) at GFDL
The 10th US Climate Modeling Summit was held at GFDL on May 1 – 3, 2024. The meeting, co-organized by John Dunne of Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) and Vijay Tallapragada of National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Environmental Modeling Center (EMC), included a topical workshop for 1.5 days and a summit meeting for one day. This year’s topical workshop was on “Informing earth system models with coupled data assimilation – advancing the science, establishing the need and viability across components”. Coupled Data Assimilation (CDA) for Earth System Models (ESMs) is recognized as a high priority research area and is gaining importance from many operational and research centers worldwide. The workshop was intended to survey the state of the art in combining observations with ESMs across the coupled system of atmosphere, ocean, land, hydrology, cryosphere, chemistry, atmospheric composition, and biogeochemistry, with a view towards identifying synergies to leverage work across centers and international efforts. Speakers at the workshop provided many examples of successful advances in CDA but also highlighted current challenges such as model biases that limit how DA can work effectively.
A group photo of the workshop in-person participants taken outside the GFDL Princeton University Forrestal Campus.
Following the workshop, the summit meeting attended by two representatives from each of the six U.S. climate modeling centers, started with the modeling center updates and summary of collaborative activities including some model intercomparison projects and national and international activities (e.g., Global Precipitation Experiment (GPEX)). The 2024 summit meeting devoted a session to discuss the use of AI/ML at the modeling centers and potential areas for collaboration or coordination. With invited presentations, the modeling centers then discussed special topics including CMIP7, decision-relevant climate services, the sixth National Climate Assessment, the Earth System Grid Federation and benchmarking, and recent perspective papers on “operationalization” of climate modeling. A report will be developed by the co-organizers of the 2024 summit to summarize the activities and recommendations.
From DOE, in-person participants included Gary Geernaert, the IGIM chair and the Director of DOE Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD), and Earth and Environmental Systems Modeling (EESM) program managers Xujing Davis and Renu Joseph. E3SM representatives were Dave Bader, the E3SM Project PI, and Ruby Leung, E3SM’s Chief Scientist. For the workshop, EESM supported work was presented in person by Jerry Meehl from NCAR, Yun Liu from Texas A&M university, and Ruby Leung from PNNL. Several DOE scientists also presented virtually at the summit meeting: Paul Ullrich from LLNL, Andrew Gentleman from PNNL, and Forrest Hoffman from ORNL.
This article is a part of the E3SM “Floating Points” Newsletter, to read the full Newsletter check:
