S-CMIP: Swedish climate modelling and contributions to international projects.
Abstract
Abstract
The central motivation for climate modelling is to describe the responses of the Earth’s non-linear climate system to changes in forcing and to understand its internal variability and related processes. Scientific progress in these areas and in the science of prediction and projection methods will enable better actionable information on climate change in the fields of climate change adaptation (adjustment to a new climate) and mitigation (control of greenhouse gas emissions vs effects). Mitigation science is especially important in the light of the short deadlines for actions to live up to the international Paris climate accord. International climate simulations to address the above questions are coordinated under the framework of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project, phase 6 (CMIP6, Meehl et al. 2014), which is structured in more specific MIPs, such as a ScenarioMIP and land use MIP (LUMIP) and others. CMIP6 provides input to the UN International Panel on Climate Change IPCC. Standardized output data generated in S-CMIP will partly be uploaded to CMIPs data grid (Earth System Grid Federation, ESGF) accessible to the global climate research community for further analysis. CMIP5 led to more than 1000 peer-reviewed publications.
Climate model simulations in S-CMIP during 2020 will continue to address CMIP6 questions, and will use the outcome of CMIP6 for better support of national and international decisions on adaptation and mitigation choices. S-CMIP will carry out calculations connected to ongoing research projects funded by EU-H2020. Formas, VR and the Swedish National Space Agency. These cover understanding and modeling of processes in the climate system, exploration of the predictability of climate on time scales of several years, the role of grid resolution, finding emission pathways that avoid climate tipping points, and the probability of climate extremes in future climate. All these projects are externally reviewed and considered state of the art. More specifically, model simulations will address sources ofpredictability in decadal climate prediction, better process descriptions for aerosol processes in climate simulations, tipping points in the climate system, large ensemble simulations, the CMIP6 LUMIP (land use – carbon cycle and biophysical feedbacks), and C4MIP (carbon and nitrogen feedbacks) experiments, climate processes on the 1000 y (and longer) time scale, mechanisms behind recent regional cooling in parts of Eurasia, the the influence of ocean surface waves on the climate and regional simulations to dynamically interpret global CMIP6 scenarios for Europe.
The backbone of the research group are two Strategic research areas (SRA), the Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University (SU), with Rossby Centre at SMHI as a partner, and the “ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system” (MERGE) network coordinated by Lund University (LU) including Gothenburg University (GU) and the Rossby Centre. The Rossby Centre at SMHI is the national hub of climate model development and application of climate models for research purposes. Uppsala University (UU) is integrated in this collaboration with process simulations.
