Marine biogeochemist and model developer J. Keith Moore received the 2015 Community Earth System Model (CESM) Distinguished Award at the 20th Annual CESM Workshop on June 15. Moore, Associate Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine, was cited for more than 10 years of service to the Biogeochemistry Working Group and for his contributions to the design and development of the first version of the biogeochemistry component of the ocean model.

In the early 2000s, Moore, along with Scott Doney and Keith Lindsay, assembled an ocean biogeochemistry model that incorporated several parameterizations he had developed. He has been involved in all further developments of the model, now called the Biogeochemical Elemental Cycling (BEC) model, and has written many papers describing the model and its performance in different scenarios and configurations. In three such papers, Moore presented results from a 20th century simulation of the CESM1(BGC) coupled model, which was part of a suite of simulations contributed to the Fifth Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5).

That simulation exhibited weak uptake of carbon by the ocean, contributing to a high carbon dioxide mole fraction bias in the atmosphere during the 20th century. Over the last year, Moore undertook an effort to refine many of the parameters in the BEC to improve the uptake strength of the marine system. These enhancements have been incorporated into a new version of CESM(BGC), which will be used for a new set of simulations in the near future.

Keith Moore performs marine science research for research projects funded by multiple agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). He plays a key role in DOE's Biogeochemistry-Climate Feedbacks Scientific Focus Area, which aims to assess the fidelity of biogoechemical cycling in land, ocean, and atmosphere models.