Global Climate Change Understanding how we affect our environment
	DOE Program Managers
	Anjuli Bamzai DOE Office of Biological & Environmental Research	Lali Chatterjee DOE Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research

Fossil fuel combustion for energy production is altering the chemical makeup of the Earth's atmosphere. The consequences for climate change and the potential for significant, even catastrophic, nonlinear feedbacks through the Earth system are topics of significant international debate. These global changes, principally driven by human activities at regional scales, require us to acquire an unprecedented understanding of potential regional and global changes in our environment, economy, and society.

Climate scientists today face challenging uncertainties about how climate systems will respond to future environmental changes. There are many compelling questions that must be answered if we are to predict future climate and gain the understanding needed to assess and ameliorate the potential impacts of energy use. The key science question that drives the SciDAC Climate research is complex and complicated. Simply put, it is

How will the Earth's climate respond to physical, chemical, and biological changes produced by global alterations of the atmosphere, ocean, and land?

The Department’s charge to understand the impacts of energy production and use on the environment continues to lead the evolution of the climate modeling and simulation research agenda in conjunction with the Climate Change Prediction Program. SciDAC efforts will advance the development of future climate models based on theoretical foundations and improved computational methods that dramatically increase both the accuracy and throughput of computer model-based predictions of future climate system response to the increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

Ice Sheet Initiative for CLimate ExtremeS (ISICLES) launched in 2009

ASCR launched a new initiative for high resolution ice sheet modeling codes, scalable on high performance computers in 2009 July. ISICLES (Ice Sheet Initiative for CLimate ExtremeS) will allow better inclusion of dynamic ice sheet modeling in Earth System and Climate models. Six projects were awarded for three years (for a total of three million dollars per year) based on proposals submitted to funding opportunity announcements DE-PS02-09ER09-21 and LAB 09-21. More details can be found at http://www.csm.ornl.gov/ISICLES/index.html

Climate Research Projects Announced in September 2006

Modeling the Earth System
Creating a first generation Earth system model that fully simulates the coupling between the physical, chemical, and biogeochemical processes in the climate system
    Principal Investigator: John B. Drake (bbd@ornl.gov)
    Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Includes two Science Application Partnerships —
Statistical Approaches to Aerosol Dynamics for Climate Simulation
    Principal Investigator: Robert McGraw (rlm@bnl.gov)
    Brookhaven National Laboratory
Performance Engineering for the Next Generation Community Climate System Model
    Principal Investigator: Pat Worley (worleyph@ornl.gov)
    Oak Ridge National Laboratory

On a Cloudy Day - The Role of Clouds in Global Climate
Design and Testing of a Global Cloud-Resolving Model
    Principal Investigator: David A. Randall (randall@atmos.colostate.edu)
    Colorado State University

Improving Global Climate Models
Developing a uniform set of software tools suitable for evaluation of high-end climate models
    Principal Investigator: Rao Kotamarthi (vrkotamarthi@anl.gov)
    Argonne National Laboratory

Continuing Projects

Continuous Dynamic Grid Adaptation in a Global Atmospheric Model
Developing continuous dynamic grid adaptation to cluster grid points in targeted regions of interest
    Principal Investigator: William Gutowski (gutowski@iastate.edu)
    Iowa State University