A university perspective on global climate modeling

Abstract

Global atmospheric models are proliferating, in part because of the widespread availability of powerful computers. There are about two dozen global modeling groups at work in the United States today. These groups are put into four categories, considering both laboratories and universities and development and applications. Community models are a special subgroup and in principle are both developed and applied by the community. Most U.S. global modeling groups are focusing on applications rather than on development. This is especially true in the university community, although over the years university groups have made important contributions in the model-development arena. A key role of university groups is to train new model developers at a rate matched to the community's demand for such scientists. A simple but functional conceptual organization of the U.S. global modeling community is suggested.