Push-Button Climate Modeling Now Available

TerraDaily: A tool used by scientists to create climate models is about to become easier to use and available to a much wider audience. A new Web-enhanced version of the most commonly used climate modeling system will allow many more scientists - and even curious students - to test theories about the planet's climate.

Matt Huber, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University, says the Community Climate System Model is already used by thousands of scientists, and the results from their models often make headlines around the world.

"This new tool makes climate modeling available to a much wider audience," Huber says. "This allows us to get science done at the push of a button. Now we have a 'turn-key' climate model."

The new climate modeling TeraGrid service tool was announced Wednesday (June 6) at the annual meeting of TeraGrid users in Madison, Wis. Huber says this tool will allow many more people to become involved with climate modeling and to ask "what if?" questions.

"Our hope is to roll this out to a broader community," he says. "Researchers on the cutting edge of science can use this tool, but so can high school students who want to run their own climate models. They will generate equal output."

The Community Climate System Model, known to many scientists as CCSM, is actually a collection of interconnected modeling systems. The climate system model contains separate climate models using data from the atmosphere, oceans, land surfaces and ice fields and then brings the models together in yet another system known as a coupler.

Huber says climate models can be sensitive to underlying issues related to getting the multiple systems to work together.

The Community Climate System Model was developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and is currently funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.