Climate Forcings Task Team

Co-leads: Paul Durack PCMDI/LLNL  and Vaishali Naik, NOAA

This task team will focus on how the CMIP required forcing agents will need to broaden for CMIP7. Climate forcings play a key role in the definition of exogenous drivers of ongoing climate change. As such, they are an integral part of the definition of historical, future scenario and idealised simulations.

Challenge

Aim & Objectives

Members

Activities

Challenge

The CMIP6 forcings include:

  • emissions (CO2, aerosol, and ozone precursors from anthropogenic and biomass burning sources)
  • concentrations (CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases, aerosols, ozone)
  • volcanoes (emissions and concentrations)
  • land-use/land cover change, ocean and atmosphere boundary conditions for atmosphere and ocean experiments respectively, in addition to numerous other climate forcing agents.

Due to the expanding complexities of Earth System Models to represent more processes explicitly, it is anticipated that the required forcing agents will need to broaden for CMIP7. As model configurations continue to target higher and higher spatial resolution, additional expansion of temporal and geographical resolutions may be required.

Aim & Objectives

The aim of this TT is to identify and implement the next generation forcings for current and future generations of Earth System models.

Objectives:

  1. Evaluate the CMIP6 forcing collection and identify issues, coverage gaps or omitted fields (e.g., natural, not anthropogenic, CH4 emissions).
  2. Identify next generation forcings for current and future generations of Earth System models.
  3. Work with teams to deliver them.
  4. Coordinate with modelling groups to perform evaluation and generate simulations using the newly generated/updated forcing datasets

The TT will also be coordinating closely with the various Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs) to ensure consistency between the experimental design and the required forcings. The WCRP Lighthouse Activity Explaining and Predicting Earth System Change (EPESC) and Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) will also be important stakeholders.

Members

Climate Forcings Task Team members

Paul Durack 2022- Co-lead PCMDI/LLNL USA
Vaishali Naik 2022- Co-lead NOAA USA
Louise Chini 2022- Member UMD USA
John Fasullo 2022- Member UCAR USA
Bernd Funke 2022- Member IAA Spain
Heather Graven 2022- Member Imperial College, London UK
Michaela Hegglin 2022- Member Forschungszentrum Jülich Germany
Thibaut Lurton 2022- Member IPSL France
Zebedee Nicholls 2022- Member University of Melbourne Australia
David Plummer 2022- Member Environment Canada Canada
Keywan Riahi 2022- Member IIASA Austria
Steven Smith 2022- Member PNNL USA
Margreet van Marle 2022- Member Deltares Netherlands
Tilo Ziehn 2022- Member CSIRO Australia
Claire Macintosh 2022- Member ESA UK
Thomas Aubry 2023- Member University of Exeter UK
Stephanie Fiedler 2023- Member GEOMAR Germany

Stakeholders

Rachel Hoesly2022 –StakeholderPNNLUSA
Mahesh Kovilakam 2022 –StakeholderNASAUSA
Malte Meinshausen2022 – StakeholderUniversity of MelbourneAustralia
Anja Schmidt2022 –StakeholderDLR/LMU MunichGermany

Activities

Open call for members closed in October 2022 – call text available here.

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