TWP1 - NUMERICAL MODELLING OF THE CLIMATE SYSTEM
Responsable : Jean-Louis Dufresne, LMD
Objectifs et stratégie
The ability to better understand and to anticipate the climate change on decadal timescales and beyond depends for a large part on major developments and improvements of the predictive capabilities of climate models. In the absence of established analogues of greenhouse gas-driven climate change, numerical modelling based on a physically-based representation of the key processes and components that govern the dynamics of the climate system is increasingly recognized as the most valuable approach to anticipate future climate change, at both the global and regional scales, and to improve the predictive capabilities of climate models. IPSL has progressively developed a comprehensive Earth System Models (ESM), with a leading position in many of the relevant aspects (such as ocean modelling, carbon-climate coupling, cloud feedback studies, paleo-climate simulations...). The three main objectives of this transverse work package are (i) to provide simulation results and to realise specific simulations to "feed" in the other work packages, (ii) to realize specific developments that help the other work packages, and (iii) to continue to develop the IPSL climate model to maintain the IPSL Earth System Models (ESM) as world-leading.
In view of these major scientific and societal concerns, L-IPSL will focus on three related key objectives:
- Improving the representation of physical processes and their couplings
- Improving the representation of biogeochemistry processes and their coupling with physical processes
- Developing new algorithms and models to take advantage of new computer performance