[AO announcement] Fall AGU session: Climate Study in Idealized GCMs (USA)

[Edwin P. Gerber]

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to contribute to a session on the study of 
climate in idealized GCMs at the Fall AGU meeting, held in San Francisco, 
CA from 10-14 December.  Abstracts must be submitted by 6 September.

Here are the details on the session:
A28. Studying Climate Dynamics with Idealized Atmospheric GCMs
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm07/?content=search&show=detail&sessid=12

Abstracts should be submitted online to:
http://submissions3.agu.org/submission/entrance.asp

Thank you very much, and hope to see you in San Francisco,

Edwin Gerber and Seok-Woo Son

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A28. Studying Climate Dynamics with Idealized Atmospheric GCMs

Between increasingly complex, fully comprehensive climate models and the 
simple, classical models of geophysical fluid dynamics (e.g. Phillip's two 
layer model), lies a class of simple atmospheric GCMs which faithfully 
capture the dynamics of atmospheric motion, but run without 
computationally expensive, and often poorly understood, physical 
parameterization schemes. A prime example of this is the Held and Suarez 
model (1994, BAMS). The relative simplicity and computational efficiency 
of such GCMs have made them an attractive tool for studies of atmospheric 
variability on intraseasonal and interannual timescales, and the response 
of the atmosphere to external perturbations, e.g., a warmer world. Simple 
forcings enable one to easily explore a broad range of physical regimes, 
so that theories and scaling laws can be tested. In addition, one can 
answer questions of convergence with respect to integration time and 
resolution, enabling one to separate numerical issues from physical ones. 
Finally, a simple specification of the forcing allow others to reproduce 
and confirm published results.

In this session we hope to bring together the community of investigators 
using idealized GCMs to study climate dynamics. In systems where the 
equations are fully known, do we have reliable numerical schemes and 
sufficient resolution to simulate the relevant dynamics? What can 
idealized GCMs tell us about dynamical processes in the atmosphere that 
determine today's climate? What can simple GCMs tell us about internal 
variability of the atmosphere, both in the troposphere and stratosphere? 
Lastly, what can these simple GCMs tell us about climate change, and can 
they be used to better interpret and improve comprehensive climate models?


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Edwin P. Gerber
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics
Columbia University
200 S. W. Mudd Building, MC 4701
500 W. 120th Street
New York NY 10027

(p) 212.854.4246
(f) 212.854.8257