SynTraCE-21
Tuesday, 03 May 2011 10:08
Background
The climate of the last 21 kyr is important because it exhibits significant regional-to-global climate variability under large climate forcing. New proxy evidence and new modeling activities have led to rapid advances in our understanding of climate change over the last 21 kyr. Climate models and computing power have been significantly enhanced in recent years such that simulations of transient climate evolution can now be efficiently run using state-of-art synchronously coupled general circulation models (CGCMs).
These synchronously coupled simulations will provide an unprecedented opportunity to the paleoclimate community for model/data comparison and improved understanding of climate evolution and abrupt climate change. Moreover, such continuous transient simulations mark a new era in paleoclimate model-data comparison by, for the first time, allowing for a direct comparison of time series between the model and data.
Objectives
The overarching goals of the working group and the associated workshop series are:
- To facilitate an international effort at a comprehensive synthesis of proxy climate records in order to better describe the major features of global climate evolution of the last 21 kyr
- To conduct data comparison to transient model simulations.
The following two specific objectives have been established:
- Objective 1: Identify and synthesize the relevant paleoclimate data which will constrain the major features of the climate evolution over the last 21 kyr, including meltwater forcing, the surface and deep ocean, the global monsoon system, and terrestrial ecosystems.
- Objective 2: Compare the full set of transient model output to the global array of time series in the newly developed proxy data base in order to more fully understand the response of the climate system to forcings over the last 21 kyr and the model behavior and limitations.
From this, the Working Group aims to develop priorities in both data collection and model development towards more realistic transient simulations in the future.
