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Climate models and modeling groups

Links to climate models and/or climate modeling groups. These are sites maintained by large groups performing climate research by running global circulation models on really big and fast computers. A lot of sites have available images of model results (along with the model output used to make the image), and some even offer the source code of some models. The figure you see was pinched from the LLNL climate modeling site, and you can get the full sized version by clicking on it.

Last checked or updated: Feb. 10, 1997

Cambridge Center for Atmospheric Science: General research on understanding the chemical-climatic environment of the atmsophere, e.g. fine-scale mixing of atmospheric pollutants, stratosphere-troposphere exchange, etc.
CERFACS Global Change and Climate Modeling: The climate group at CERFACS site has information about their current research, documents and publications, and a Climate Experiments Atlas online. They've developed an online viewing system called Vairmer to enable browsing the Atlas via the Web.
CHAMMP Project: The DOE Computer Hardware, Advanced Mathematics and Model Physics program is interested in the development of new mathematical methods for the solution of the shallow water equations in spherical geometry since they are used as a kernel for both oceanic and atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs). This has source code for single- and multi-processor spectral transform shallow water models used for benchmarking purposes as well as some documentation.
Climatic Impacts Centre, Macquarie University: Contains information about various projects going on at the CIC, including the PILPS and RICE Projects and the CCIX Project.
Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia: Includes information about researchers, recent papers, on-line publication, dendroclimatology, and more.
Colorado State Dept. of Atmospheric Science: This department has developed and uses a general circulation model called BUGS (BeaUtiful General circulation modeling System).
Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP): A CLIVAR project to compare the control climate simulations of the coupled climate models currently in use.
Earth System Science Center (ESSC): This center, located a Penn State, combines the departments of Geosciences, Meteorology, Geography and Mineral Economics to search for links between the Earth's physical processes and past and future global change. Research focuses include the global water cycle, biogeochemical cycles, Earth system history, and human impacts on the Earth system.
German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ): A supercomputing center for climate research charged with supporting the German climate research community with computational, archival and post processing resources. This contains links to climate data resources, satellite data, and graphics and visualization resources at DKRZ.
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL): The goal of this lab is to expand the scientific understanding of those physical processes which govern the behavior of the atmosphere and oceans as complex fluid systems, and the scientific work encompasses such disciplines as meteorology, oceanography, hydrology, classical physics, fluid dynamics, chemistry, applied math, high-speed digital computation, and experiment design and analysis. The site contains the GFDL Modular Ocean Model (MOM), climatological data sets, and information about the projects and staff.
Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS): This is a NASA research institute located near Columbia University in New York City, and is primarily engaged in studies of global climate change. The site contains information about the various research programs, especially Earth observations, global climate modeling, climate impacts, and planetary atmospheres as well as links to datasets, images and software pertinent to their research mission.
Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research: This center, located in Bracknell, UK, exists to provide the UK government with an authoritative, up-to-date assessment of both natural and man-made climate change. This is accomplished via a research program whose main aspects are the simulation of the present climate, understanding the factors controlling climate change and predicting the climate of the next century, and developing and using global climate simulation models. The site contains an index of datasets and a list of refereed publications originating at the center.
High-Performance Global Climate Modeling (LLNL): The mission of this program is to develop an advanced generation of parallel climate models together with a coputational framework that will provide a comprehensive climate systems modling capability on high-performance computing systems. The site contains brief information about the program and some graphical output.
Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique du CNRS: A French research group that engages in climate modeling amongst other things.
LANL Advanced Computing Lab Global Climate Modeling: A project to develop ocean and atmospheric general circulation models that can be used on massively parallel computers.
MECCA (Model Evaluation Consortium for Climate Assessment): This was established to perform numerical experiments to identify and quantify the uncertainties associated with predictions of greenhouse gas-induced climate change, to create a protocol for analyzing the experimental results, and to communicate their findings. The site contains detailed on-line descriptions (with graphics) of the progress of the project as well as links to the institutions that constitute the consortium.
NASA/GSFC Coupled Climate Dynamics Group (CCDG): This site contains information about their research purposes and projects as well as their staff. Also available are some source codes and research reports.
NASA Langley Atmospheric Modeling Group: Specializes in lower and middle atmosphere research using models and observations. Site includes some results concerning column-integrated ozone, monthly cloudiness, and sudden stratospheric warming.
NCAR Climate and Global Dynamics Division (CGD): A division of NCAR with the mission of promoting further understanding of the physical causes of present and past climates and of large-scale atmospheric and oceanic dynamics. It consists of several sections, two of whom are concerned with global climate modeling and shown below.
PCMDI: The Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison coordinates the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (PMIP) and engages in research and other collaborative activities directed to diagnosing global climate models and to improving their performance. They have also developed the VCS data analysis software.
Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC): A multidisciplinary research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in atmospheric studies of the Earth and other planets, interactive computing and image processing, and spaceflight hardware design and fabrication. The site contains further information about itself as well as data sources and links, research information, and image processing and graphing software.

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Dughong Min
Dept. of Oceanography
Texas A&M University
min@ocean.tamu.edu