Earth & Environmental Systems Modeling

The Earth System Model Development area supports innovative and computationally advanced earth system modeling capabilities, with the ultimate goal of providing accurate and computationally advanced representations of the fully coupled and integrated earth system, as needed for energy and related sectoral infrastructure planning. Key examples of critical information for energy include accurate projections of water availability, drought incidence and persistence, temperature extremes, storminess, opening of the Arctic Ocean, and sea level and storm-surge in coastal regions.

The goal of the Regional & Global Model Analysis (RGMA) area is to enhance predictive-, process-, and system-level understanding of modes of variability and change within the earth system while using E3SM along with a suite of regional and global earth system models (ESMs), innovative data architectures, uncertainty characterization, and diagnostics measures. This area advances capabilities to design, evaluate, diagnose, and analyze hierarchical global and regional earth system models and simulations informed by observations, while focusing on predictability across a wide range of temporal and spatial scales.

MultiSector Dynamics (MSD) advances the science of complex interactions and co-evolutionary pathways among human and natural systems, sectors, and processes. The research is focused on the energy system, including resource availability and recovery, the grid and multiple energy sources, demands, supply chains, and the critical interdependencies among major sectors and infrastructures, including water, land (e.g., agriculture), transportation, and more.