DOE Announces Funding for Earth System Model Development & Analysis
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently strengthened its support of earth system model development and analysis with $7 million in funding for nine studies through the Regional & Global Model Analysis (RGMA) and Earth System Model Development (ESMD) program areas.
“As our computational capabilities at the national laboratories have grown, it has become possible to model environmental systems with greater precision and predictive power,” says Dr. Chris Fall, Director of DOE’s Office of Science. “These studies will help provide more accurate representation of several particularly complex earth system processes and thereby improve the E3SM’s (DOE’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model) overall predictive abilities.”
Research funded is intended to benefit the public through an increased understanding of the earth system. It will focus on a range of different topics, ranging from improved representation of ecological systems and cloud-aerosol interactions in predictive models to quantifying uncertainties across a range of processes, scales, time horizons, and regional impacts.
Funding totals $7 million in fiscal year 2020 dollars for projects lasting three years. Award recipients and affiliated EESM program areas are:
- ESMD: James Randerson, University of California-Irvine – “Interactions between land use, fires and dust as drivers of global climate change”
- ESMD: Joannes Westerink, University of Notre Dame – “Efficiently resolving the terrestrial-aquatic interface in E3SM with sub-grid methods to improve coastal simulations”
- RGMA: Brian Soden, University of Miami – “Investigating Cloud Feedbacks in Earth System Models”
- RGMA: Takamitsu Ito, Georgia Tech Research Corporation – “Ocean physical-biogeochemical interactions in the CMIP6 and E3SM Earth System Models”
- RGMA: Abigail Swann, University of Washington: “Evaluating the influence of plants on hydrologic cycling: Quantifying and validating the role of plant processes and stomatal conductance”
- RGMA: Hui Su, University of California-Los Angeles: “The Role of Deep Convection and Large-scale Circulation in Driving Model Spread in Low Cloud Feedback and Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity.”
- ESMD: Robert Pincus, Columbia University – “Improving the Capabilities and Computational Efficiency of the RTE+RRTMGP Radiation Code”
- ESMD: Francois Primeau, University of California-Irvine – “Improving the initial state of biogeochemical components in Earth System Models”
- ESMD: Marcus van Lier-Walqui, Columbia University (collaborative-lead) and Hugh Morrison, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research – “Improving the Parameterization of Cloud and Rain Microphysics in E3SM using a Novel Observationally-Constrained Bayesian Approach”