CCR's Climate Change Prediction Research
Planning for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report
We plan to apply the CCSM4 Earth System Model to perform experiments with the new Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) mitigation/adaptation scenarios for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). This model includes the detailed physical, chemical, and biological processes, interactions and feedbacks in the atmosphere, oceans, and land surface, to enable us to perform experiments with the policy-relevant RCP adaptation/mitigation scenarios. Similar to the Fourth Assessment we plan to provide to the climate change research community one of the largest set of computer generated ensemble simulations over the next few years. In addition to performing the simulations we will take a lead role in the analyses of the climate change simulations. Another aspect of the coordinated activities for the AR5 will be decadal predictability/prediction experiments. We intend to use the 50 km resolution CCSM4 for these experiments to quantify decadal predictability in th century hindcasts, and to perform future predictions for the 2030 time frame.