Development cycle 2 of the Modular Earth Submodel System (MESSy2)

Abstract

The Modular Earth Submodel System (MESSy) is an open, multi- institutionalproject providing a strategy for developing comprehensive Earth System Models(ESMs) with highly flexible complexity. The first version of the MESSyinfrastructure and process submodels, mainly focusing on atmosphericchemistry, has been successfully coupled to an atmospheric GeneralCirculation Model (GCM) expanding it into an Atmospheric Chemistry GCM(AC-GCM) for nudged simulations and into a Chemistry Climate Model (CCM) forclimate simulations. Here, we present the second development cycle of MESSy, which comprises (1)an improved and extended infrastructure for the basemodel independentcoupling of process-submodels, (2) new, highly valuable diagnosticcapabilities for the evaluation with observational data and (3) an improvedatmospheric chemistry setup. With the infrastructural changes, we place theheadstone for further model extensions from a CCM towards a comprehensiveESM. The new diagnostic submodels will be used for regular re-evaluations ofthe continuously further developing model system. The updates of thechemistry setup are briefly evaluated. © Author(s) 2010.