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Page 31
Appendix A
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To:
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Bob Corell, Mike Hall, Charles Kennel and Ari
Patrinos
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From:
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Tim Barnett, David Randall, Bert Semtner and
Richard Somerville
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Subject:
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Strengthening the United States National Climate
Modeling Effort
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Date:
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October 21, 1995
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1. The Crisis in U.S. Climate
Modeling
Many climate researchers in the United States and abroad realize
that the U.S. is no longer the world leader in climate modeling.
Today, Germany appears to be in first place, with the United
Kingdom in second. The U.S. is at best third and may well be lower.
By any measure, the American effort is falling seriously behind
that of Europe and, perhaps, Japan. The current crop of U.S. models
is technically less sophisticated, observationally less well
verified, and physically less complete than the best foreign
models.
This need not be so. American scientists are as talented and as
well educated as those abroad. We enjoy generally adequate funding
in the modeling area, and except for a few years in the 1990s we
have had the world's most powerful computers at our disposal.
General circulation models of both the atmosphere and the ocean
were first developed in the United States. Today, however, as the
generation of American scientists who pioneered climate modeling
approaches
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Page 31
Appendix A
To:
Bob Corell, Mike Hall, Charles Kennel and Ari
Patrinos
From:
Tim Barnett, David Randall, Bert Semtner and
Richard Somerville
Subject:
Strengthening the United States National Climate
Modeling Effort
Date:
October 21, 1995
1. The Crisis in U.S. Climate
Modeling
Many climate researchers in the United States and abroad realize
that the U.S. is no longer the world leader in climate modeling.
Today, Germany appears to be in first place, with the United
Kingdom in second. The U.S. is at best third and may well be lower.
By any measure, the American effort is falling seriously behind
that of Europe and, perhaps, Japan. The current crop of U.S. models
is technically less sophisticated, observationally less well
verified, and physically less complete than the best foreign
models.
This need not be so. American scientists are as talented and as
well educated as those abroad. We enjoy generally adequate funding
in the modeling area, and except for a few years in the 1990s we
have had the world's most powerful computers at our disposal.
General circulation models of both the atmosphere and the ocean
were first developed in the United States. Today, however, as the
generation of American scientists who pioneered climate modeling
approaches
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Page 32
retirement age, there is a crisis in the field. Unless the U.S.
moves quickly and decisively to reinvigorate its effort, it may be
relegated to permanent second-class status in this critical area of
Earth science research.
Our purpose in this memo is first to briefly outline three
strategic options for regaining the lead in global climate modeling
that the U.S. enjoyed as recently as the early 1980s. Then, we
argue for adopting one of these three options.
2. Three Options for Progress
Option 1: Further increase funding at
existing modeling centers
The government might simply increase the funding and thus the
level of effort at one or more of the existing climate modeling
centers. Indeed, much excellent research has already come from
these centers, which developed some of the first modern climate
models. Additional funding would surely have some positive
effect.
In our view, however, it is not money which has been the primary
rate-limiting factor in the progress made recently at these
centers. Instead, we think that organizational and managerial
factors, together with personnel issues, have kept these centers
from maintaining the lead they once held. Too often, relevant
research by outstanding scientists, at a variety of U.S.
institutions, has not been well-integrated into the modeling
efforts. In particular, the centers have not benefited optimally
from scientific advances made elsewhere, especially in academia,
despite the fact that the U.S. has a proud history of climate model
development in academia, dating back to the 1960s, and including
some very important work.
In sum, we think that the option of accelerating progress by
simply adding funding will fail without also making major changes
in the management and institutional cultures of the existing
centers.
Option II: A new center for climate
modeling
A new modeling center could be created. This would be a hard
sell politically in these austere times, given that several
modeling centers already exist. In addition, it is unlikely that
many of the best scientists would willingly leave their present
positions to staff the new
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center.
Option III: A distributed national
climate modeling program
We believe that creating a Distributed National Climate Modeling
Program is the most promising strategy for the U.S. to regain
international preeminence in global climate modeling. A prototype
distributed program already exists in the form of DOE's CHAMMP
program. CHAMMP, which is distributed over multiple laboratories
and universities, has successfully brought together specialists in
ocean/atmosphere processes, numerical methods, and computer
applications. Under the auspices of CHAMMP, we have seen the
development of a close collaboration involving NCAR, GFDL and
several university groups with the Los Alamos National Laboratory
to implement two different oceanic general circulation models and
an atmospheric general circulation model on massively parallel
computers. A Distributed National Climate Modeling Program could be
built on the CHAMMP framework. Such an effort would require
multi-agency funding and management. It would also require a
focusing of effort and a directed management approach to the
science and engineering aspects of the program. One key is good
management of people and existing resources. Good management will
not suffice, however, without good scientific ideas.
3. A Three-Tier Structure for the
Distributed Program.
We envision a Distributed National Climate Modeling Program with
three elements, or tiers.
Tier 1: The U.S. National Climate
Model
Tier 1 would maintain and make available to a community of users
a single U.S. National Climate Model, initially encompassing the
atmosphere, oceans, sea ice, and land surface, and eventually
extending to the full climate system, including biogeochemical
aspects. The National Climate Model need not be centralized at a
single institution, however, particularly now that we have entered
the era of the network. Computing, model development, and even
consultation can be spatially distributed.
We emphatically do not advocate that the U.S. have only one
climate model, both because model development can benefit from
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competition, and also because groups dedicated to model
development need to maintain control of their own research
strategies. We do believe, however, that it is important that the
U.S. have a single formally designated National Climate Model, and
that the climate modeling expertise that is distributed throughout
the U.S. flow effectively and continuously into this model, in
order to keep it at the very forefront of the state of the art.
We also consider it essential that the national Climate Model
support a large community of users, in order to ensure thorough
testing and evaluation. A significant level of infrastructure would
be needed to support this user community. A history of strong
feedback from a large and active user community is one reason that
the Europeans dominate today. We advocate, therefore, that groups
in U.S. universities and national laboratories which are performing
climate simulations but are not focused on model development should
be strongly encouraged to use the U.S. National Climate Model.
Tier 2: Model development
research
Tier 2 would provide a solid foundation of climate model
development research to feed into the National Climate Model. This
model development research should not be centralized or regimented
and need not be based directly on use of the National Climate Model
itself, because the best new ideas can come from anyone, anywhere.
In particular, model development research should continue to occur
both in national laboratories and in universities.
The academic community is especially well positioned to produce
new discoveries and innovation. As already mentioned, the U.S. has
a proud tradition of such work. University-based model development
groups are needed to train the next generation of modelers.
Students do not learn the art of climate modeling simply by running
a community model developed in a distant laboratory by people with
whom they have little interaction. Aspiring young modelers can
learn best through close, student-advisor interactions with those
who are actually developing the next generation of models.
We advocate that model-development research in academia consist
of two categories of efforts. The first would consist of a few
Academic Model Development Centers set up at sites chosen via
proposal, and funded for perhaps five years at a time, each at
levels of
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up to several million dollars per year. The Academic Model
Development Centers would operate in a manner similar to the NSF
Science and Technology Centers. Much of the funding needed to
support the Academic Model Development Centers could come from
judiciously identifying and eliminating existing sub-critical
modeling efforts.
The Academic Model Development Centers would not be responsible
for providing community modeling services. The responsibilities of
the Academic Model Development Centers would be to create new ideas
that would be funneled into the National Climate Model and to train
students. It is essential to set up and maintain a well-defined
mechanism to ensure that ideas are in fact effectively transferred
from the Academic Model Development Centers to the U.S. National
Climate Model. The lack of such a mechanism today is a major reason
for the weakness of the U.S. modeling effort.
There should also be a larger number of smaller university-based
climate modeling projects, each of which might focus on one
particular aspect of model development. These smaller efforts would
be arranged more informally, essentially through the standard
proposal and peer review procedure, but we think that it is
important to acknowledge explicitly that such small projects can
and should make important contributions to the overall national
effort.
Tier 3: Research on climate
variability
Tier 3 would consist of a strong program to explore climate
variability systematically, based on a hierarchy of models and
statistical methods, and centered around model applications and
understanding of the basic physics of climate processes as
represented through the development of simplified models, rather
than numerical model development. Tier 3 activities should occur in
both universities and laboratories. It is important that the Tier 3
research involving climate model applications be based on use of
the National Climate Model, rather than on a hodgepodge of models
from a variety of sources, so as to maximize feedback on the
performance of the National Climate Model.
4. Implementation
It is our view that through the three-tier, Distributed
National
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Climate Modeling Program described above, the United States can
regain world leadership in climate modeling. We suggest that these
concepts be set down and developed further in a concise National
Climate Modeling Plan, which should be focused on the production of
practical results. The National Climate Modeling Plan would be
revisited once per year.
Implementation of our suggestion would bring about several key
changes from the current situation. First, the U.S. would soon have
an officially sanctioned, world-class National Climate Model,
supporting a large user community and producing results needed by
policy makers and others. Second, a system of designated Academic
Model Development Centers would be put into place, and a formal
mechanism would be set up to ensure that high-quality new ideas are
promptly implemented in the National Climate Model. Third, the U.S.
would have a clearly defined, interagency National Climate Modeling
Plan that would spell out how the contributions of the various
participants in the U.S. climate modeling effort fit together to
make a coherent but decentralized national climate modeling
research enterprise.
We think that the participation of the scientific community is
essential for putting such a program in place. We advocate a
high-level review of the current status of the U.S. climate
modeling effort.
We would welcome the opportunity to discuss this proposal with
you and to help in implementing the program.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
national climate
