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UGAMP: A network of excellence in climate modelling and research Issue 27 October 2003 UGAMP Coordinator: Prof. Julia Slingo [email protected] Newsletter Editor: Dr. Glenn Carver [email protected] Newsletter website: acmsu.nerc.ac.uk/newsletter.html Contents NCAS News . 2 NCAS Websites . 3 NCAS Centres and Facilities . 3 UGAMP Coordinator . 4 CGAM Director . 4 ACMSU Director . 4 HPC Facilities . 5 New areas of UGAMP science 7 Chemistry-climate interactions . 19 Climate variability and predictability . 32 Atmospheric Composition . 48 Tropospheric chemistry and aerosols . 58 Climate Dynamics . 64 Model development . 72 Group News . 78 (for full contents see listing on the inside back cover) NERC Centres for Atmospheric Science, NCAS Alan Thorpe ([email protected]): Director NCAS Since the last UGAMP Newsletter there have been a significant number of NCAS developments relevant to the UK atmospheric science community. These include the following, which are particularly pertinent to the UGAMP community: • NERC have agreed to fund a new directed (new name for thematic) programme called “Surface Ocean – Lower Atmosphere Study” or SOLAS for short. • NERC have agreed to fund a “pump-priming” activity for a proposed new directed programme called Flood Risk from Extreme Events, FREE. The full proposal for FREE will be considered by NERC early in 2004. •NCAS is supporting a project to develop a new chemistry module for the HadGEM model. This is called UK-CHEM and Olaf Morgenstern at ACMSU is collaborating closely with the Hadley Centre on the project. •NCAS is supporting a project to develop the science for a new aerosol module for HadGEM. This is being led by Ken Carslaw at Leeds and is in collaboration with the Hadley Centre. •NCAS supported an experts workshop on Future Chemical Threats at the Royal Society in February and on Earth System Modelling at Cambridge in October. There are further workshops planned on Aerosols in global models and on Convection over the next few months. • The RMS Conference 2003 at UEA attracted 415 attendees and in my view it was an excellent start to what I hope will be a long-standing and important conference series bringing together the whole atmospheric science community on a biennial basis. •A group of 34 universities and allied organizations became NCAS Affiliated Institutions this year and representatives held the first of regular annual meetings to discuss the development of atmospheric science in the academic sector in the UK. Hopefully your university is an Affiliated Institution and please get to know who the lead and deputy contact people are so that you can input your views on the development of NCAS at the appropriate times. •A draft of the Atmospheric Science Strategy that underpins NCAS research has been circulated widely for consultation. Comments on the Strategy are welcomed, preferably by end of October. This Strategy will be the back-drop to forming the proposal to NERC for funding for NCAS from April 2006 onwards. This proposal will be submitted in October 2004 for final consideration by NERC in February 2005. • I’m sure Julia Slingo will be describing the Earth Simulator initiative elsewhere in the newsletter. This is an exciting opportunity which as well as its great potential for promoting UK-Japan collaboration is strongly supported by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, the Director-General of the Research Councils and by NERC. • There are many challenges ahead for the UGAMP community. Not least amongst these is continued access to sufficient high performance computing for climate modelling. I would also mention how important I think it is that we develop further the good collaboration with the Hadley Centre. It is also worth noting that UGAMP can play a central role within NERC in the developing use of Earth System models. Given the breath of processes that have to be represented in such models, the need for our interaction and collaboration with scientists right across the NERC community has never been stronger. The new NERC programme QUEST is a good opportunity for UGAMP to be centrally involved in the modelling aspects. • Some NCAS research studentships have been advertised for the academic community to bid for. This emphasizes the importance we need to place on bringing the best students into atmospheric science research. The deadline for submission of proposal by supervisors is 21 November 2003. • The NCAS Management Group of directors and heads of NCAS centres and facilities had their most recent meeting by Access Grid. This involved people located at the University of Leeds, Cambridge and Reading and at RAL. Increasingly universities are installing Access Grid facilities and it seems to be an effective way to have meetings and scientific interactions minimizing travel time and costs. NCAS Centres and Facilities CGAM: Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling – Climate processes ACMSU: Atmospheric Chemistry Modelling Support Unit – Chemistry-climate UWERN: Universities Weather Research Network – High-impact weather DIAC: Distributed Institute for Atmospheric Composition – Chemistry/physics of composition BADC: British Atmospheric Data Centre UFAM: University Facilities for Atmospheric Measurement – Ground based observations FAAM: Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements – Aircraft observations Editorial Glenn Carver ([email protected]), ACMSU, Centre for Atmospheric Science, Dept. of Chemistry, University of Cambridge This issue of the newsletter is in the main a compilation of posters and presentations from the RMS Conference at UEA in 2003 as well as regularly contributed articles. I’d just like to say a big thank you to everyone who took the time to submit an article for the newsletter. I’d also like to say thank you to Kirsten at CGAM who took a great load off my shoulders for this issue by receiving all the articles, checking them and collating them. I hope everyone enjoys reading this issue of the newsletter. UGAMP Coordinator Julia Slingo ([email protected]), CGAM, Dept. of Meteorology, University of Reading. Another bumper issue of the UGAMP Newsletter! Thank you to all who contributed and particularly to Glenn Carver for being Editor and Kirsten Wilmer-Becker for her help with bringing it all together. It is evident from the breadth and depth of the science presented here that UGAMP continues to go from strength to strength. New groups are represented (a welcome to Sheffield University and Grant Bigg, and to Liverpool University and Ric Williams) and we are branching out into new areas of earth system science, in particular with more contributions on ocean processes and their impact on climate. And it's good to see that the new ERA-40 reanalysis, completed earlier this year is already being exploited. This year we combined the UGAMP annual conference with the RMS National Conference at Norwich. It was an experiment, but one which seems to have worked extremely well. Next year we will have our own meeting, which will be held at Oxford, 8-10 September. UGAMP studentships are again on offer, this time through the wider NCAS scheme. Training the next generation of climate scientists is very important for us, and I'm glad to see so many contributions in this Newsletter from our PhD students. In the coming year we will be going through a major period of change with new computers and a new model. In December, the T3E (Turing) will be retired from CSAR and we will need to transfer our runs to the SGI machines, including the new SGI Altix (Newton). Earlier this year, the new HPCx/IBM supercomputer came on line, which offers opportunities for running really big experiments. CGAM staff are working hard to ensure that UGAMP codes are ported to both facilities and that we can exploit the power of HPCx (see Jeff Cole and Paul Burton's articles). At the same time as dealing with these computing changes, we are also planning for UGAMP's use of the new Hadley Centre model (HadGEM1) which will be frozen shortly. This has a completely new dynamical core as well as major changes to the physics parametrizations, so we shall have a steep learning curve with this model in the coming months. I hope that the next edition of the Newsletter will feature articles on the performance and use of HadGEM1. CGAM Director Julia Slingo ([email protected]), CGAM, Dept. of Meteorology, University of Reading. This past year has seen some major changes at CGAM with the appointments of 2 Senior Scientists (Lesley Gray and Jonathan Gregory) and 2 Computational Scientists (Katherine Bouton and Paul Burton). Lesley has already started to revitalise and coordinate the UGAMP middle atmosphere modelling community, whilst Jonathan brings a welcome new focus for us on climate change processes and important links with the glaciology and earth system modelling communities. Jonathan's appointment is joint funded by the Hadley Centre and recognises the close links we have with them. CGAM's Computational Science team, led by Lois Steenman-Clark, is now very strong and beginning to make a real difference in modelling and data support activities. The new CGAM website was launched during the last year, which provides a much improved information service on all aspects of our research and our support for the UGAMP community. Two important modelling programmes were proposed and funded in the last year which will both lead to major steps forward in the resolution and complexity of our climate models. UK-HiGEM (to develop, evaluate and exploit a high resolution version of HadGEM1) has been funded by NERC as a consortium programme. With partners drawn from across the NERC Centre/Surveys, University groups and the Hadley Centre, UK-HiGEM will be an important step towards a more integrated approach to global environment modelling in the UK.