S-CMIP_data: Data service for Swedish climate modelling and contributions to international projects
Abstract
The central motivation for climate modeling is to describe the responses of the Earth’s nonlinear 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 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 (several years) for actions to live up to the international Paris climate accord. Climate simulations to address the above questions are coordinated under the framework of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project, phase 6 (CMIP6), which is structured in more specific MIPs, such as a ScenarioMIP and land use MIP (LUMIP) and others. Data from CMIP6 will be used for supporting the 6th assessment report of the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Standardized output data generated in the S-CMIP compute project (SNIC 2019/2-8, ongoing) will partly be uploaded to CMIPs data grid (ESGF) accessible to the global climate research community. The predecessor CMIP5 has led to more than 1000 peer-reviewed publications.
S-CMIP is carrying 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, millennium and paleo time scale climate, 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, are considered state of the art and are expected to generate several publications by members of this consortium.
S-CMIP_data (SNIC 2016/8-3 with expiration date 2020-07-01) is the active data storage project linked to the S-CMIP project. The simulations performed within S-CMIP generate a substantial amount of data, which needs to be stored, processed and published. Those tasks require a data infrastructure based on interconnected large-scale storage, computer resources and publication systems (such as the ESGF node at NSC).
The backbone of the research group are two Strategic research areas, the Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University, with Rossby Centre at SMHI as a partner, and the “ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system” (MERGE) network coordinated by Lund University including Gothenburg University and the Rossby Centre. The Rossby Centre at SMHI is the national hub for climate model development and application for research purposes. Uppsala University is integrated in this collaboration with process simulations.
