While DOE’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility, Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program, and Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) project in Earth System Modeling (ESM) program have made considerable contributions to understanding of the atmospheric component of Earth’s climate system and the development and evaluation of global climate model (GCM) parameterizations, greater advances may follow from closer coordination among these programs. A multi-disciplinary team of observationalists and modelers, from local to global scales, might more effectively address the major uncertainties in understanding and modeling the atmospheric system, in order to develop the next generation of climate models.

To that end, the Climate and Environmental Sciences Division (CESD) within the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science convened a workshop in October 2015 that focused on improving model treatment of atmospheric processes. Leading scientists from DOE’s ARM Climate Research Facility, ASR program, and ACME project in ESM program came together to improve coordination of their efforts and resources.

Under the main focus of refining and evaluating global climate model paramaterizations regarding the Earth’s atmosphere, workshop participants established priorities for developing model representations of cloud dynamics, agreed on critical measurements required for improving models at various scales, and hammered out strategies to improve communication between measurement and modeling scientists.

The report from the workshop is now available on the Office of Science BER website.