This award funds the development of a new class of climate system models combining the spatial capabilities of coupled General Circulation Models (GCM) with highly resolved and computationally efficient long-term components including ice sheets and oceans. This will allow for long temporal integrations while accounting for evolving boundary conditions and transient forcing, including greenhouse gas variations.
The premise for the project is that the application of sophisticated numerical climate models to isolated snapshots at specific time points through the Cenozoic has contributed to an understanding of equilibrium climate sensitivity under a wide range of boundary conditions. The researchers maintain that such an approach is somewhat limited by failing to account for the time-continuous nature of climate change over long time scales. They postulate that a better understanding of relatively sudden transitions and abrupt events recognized in Cenozoic climate records requires a new modeling approach capable of multi-million year integrations of long-term variables (i.e., oceans, ice sheets, geochemical cycles) while accounting for relatively high frequency forcing (e.g., orbital cycles) and internal feedbacks contributing to non-linear behavior.
Specifically, the researchers will simulate both transitional climate shifts (Eocene-Oligocene cooling and Antarctic glaciation; Middle-Late Miocene cooling and the buildup of East Antarctic ice; onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation) and transient events (earliest Miocene glaciation) recognized in proxy climate records. The researchers will use multiple simulations in an attempt to identify the primary forcing and important processes associated with: 1) physical climate components, feedbacks, and interactions; and 2) the role of orbital, greenhouse gas, and tectonic forcing in Cenozoic climate variability.
Results from this research have the potential to add to the knowledge of how Earths climate transitions from one mean state to another by examining key Cenozoic temporal horizons. The use of a Global Imagination projector enhances the research and education aspects of the project by adding the ability to display model results on a spherical projection that is layered in any manner that the researcher chooses. Superimposing climatic circulation patterns over landmasses on a rotating globe, for example, can help researchers gain a new perspective on their model results while encouraging new avenues of inquiry. Similarly, allowing those outside of the field of modeling and members of the general public to see such representations could lead to greater understanding of climate processes by spurring new thoughts on old subjects.
