Project 12 (TWP1): Developing and testing a stretched version of the IPSL Earth system model

Project lead: Jean-Louis Dufresne and Férdéric Hourdin

Post-doctoral researcher : Guillaume Levavasseur

Project Start/End : October 2014 – March 2015

The IPSL-CM model is an Earth System Model that includes a representation of the physical and the biogeochemistry (carbon cycle, aerosols, chemistry...) processes at the global scale, for both the atmosphere, land surface, ocean and sea-ice. The atmospheric component, LMDZ, has a stretchable longitude-latitude grid that allows refinement of the horizontal grid over any specific region. The objective of this project was to develop tools that allow an easy use of this refinement capability over any continental regions and for the various configurations of this ESM. The scientific goal behind this development is to simulate the climate at the regional scale for past, present and future climate conditions, and to allow the analysis the interactions between global and regional climate and between climate and biogeochemistry cycles.

An engineer has been hired in order to develop and customize the use of a stretched version of the IPSL-ESM. He has developed interpolation procedures to interpolate all the required data on the model grid and run the simulations. The two regions used for benchmarking were Europe and West Africa. The first tests have been made with the atmospheric model over continents and prescribed SST. The next step will be to do the same but with a coupling with the ocean and sea-ice.

Position offer and results (January 2017 update)
 

Figure 1:

Example of the use of the zoom capability of LMDZ over the West-Africa and equatorial ocean region. This zoom is used to analyze atmosphere-aerosol interactions and will be use to analyze atmosphere