Welcome to CGD

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Airborne Carbon in the Mountains Experiment (ACME)

The Airborne Carbon in the Mountains Experiment is the first aircraft field campaign of a program supported by the NSF Biocomplexity Program and NASA Interdisciplinary Science. It is taking place in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The goal of the project is to understand carbon dynamics in montane forest regions by developing new methods for estimating carbon exchange at local to regional scales. [ACME website]

Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES)

CGD is the home of the International Project Office for the new IGBP Earth System modeling project, Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES). The primary emphasis of AIMES is to begin to integrate human processes into coupled carbon-climate models. The AIMES Project Office is responsible for the initiation and implementation of coupled carbon/climate/chemistry and human processes into the future of Earth System Modeling activities. AIMES builds on the legacy of the Coupled Carbon Cycle-Climate Model Intercomparison Project (C4MIP) and is co-chaired by Dave Schimel (CGD) and Colin Prentice (UK- QUEST).

AIMES hopes to link within and between CGD and other NCAR divisions as well as NCAR and the international community. Initial activities include the development of emissions databases and models through GEIA, co-led by Alex Guenther in ACD and Claire Granier in France. In addition, AIMES is actively participating in an Integrated History of People and Earth (IHOPE) with the goal of developing databases that capture human activities and their interactions with the environment. IHOPE is co-led by Bob Costanza (University of Vermont), Lisa Graumlich (University of Montana), Will Steffen (Australian National University) and Kathy Hibbard (CGD). [AIMES website]

Connecting Communities: Climate & Ecosystem Impact Research (CCCEIR)

Ecosystems significantly affect societies and nations by providing essential renewable resources and other benefits, including food, fiber, shelter, energy, biodiversity, clean air and water, recycling of elements, and cultural, spiritual, and aesthetic returns, while human activities, in turn, affect ecosystem processes and dynamics. Ecosystems also affect the climate system by exchanging large amounts of energy, momentum, and greenhouse gases with the atmosphere. Global climate change is altering the structure and functioning of ecosystems, which in turn affects availability of ecological resources and benefits, changes the magnitude of some feedbacks between ecosystems and the climate system, and could affect economic systems that depend on ecosystems.

A grand challenge problem is to understand and be able to project the potential effects of global climate variability and change on ecosystems, the goods and services ecosystems provide, the drivers and consequences of human responses to ecosystem variability and change, and ecosystem links to the climate system.> [CCCEIR website]

Carbon Data - Model Assimilation (C-DAS)

The Carbon Data-Model Assimilation (C-DAS) project is intended to bring observationalists and modelers together to form an integrated approach to improving our understanding of the global carbon cycle. Observations of the carbon cycle are being taken at increasingly high spatial and temporal resolutions. To understand what this data impies about the working of the underlying carbon cycle, new model-data fusion techniques are required. We have developed a variational data assimilation approach to efficiently process the new data. Atmospheric fluxes from the sea and land biosphere may be estimated efficiently at fine time/space resolutions. Alternatively, the data may be used to optimize key parameters in the carbon cycle models themselves,to improve their predictive capabilities. [C-DAS Website.]

Community Climate System Model (CCSM)

The Community Climate System Model (CCSM) is a fully-coupled, global climate model that provides state-of-the-art computer simulations of the Earth's past, present, and future climate states.

CCSM is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Adminstration of the CCSM is maintained by the Climate and Global Dynamics Division (CGD) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). [CCSM Website]