A personal perspective on modelling the climate system

Journal article

Given their increasing relevance for society, I suggest that the climate science community itself does not treat the development of error-free ab initio models of the climate system with sufficient urgency. With increasing levels of difficulty, I discuss a number of proposals for speeding up such development. Firstly, I believe that climate science should make better use of the pool of post-PhD talent in mathematics and physics, for developing next-generation climate models. Secondly, I believe there is more scope for the development of modelling systems which link weather and climate prediction more seamlessly. Finally, here in Europe, I call for a new European Programme on Extreme Computing and Climate to advance our ability to simulate climate extremes, and understand the drivers of such extremes. A key goal for such a programme is the development of a 1km global climate system model to run on the first exascale supercomputers in the early 2020s.

Authors: Palmer, T

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Royal Society
• Journal: Animal Behaviour
• Volume: 472
• Issue: 2188
• Publication date: 2016-04-13
• Acceptance date: 2016-03-11
• DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2015.0772
• ISSN: 1364-5021 and 1471-2946
• Language: English
• Keywords: systematic error; seamless prediction; climate prediction; International Bureau of Meteorology; SBTMR; cloud-resolved modelling