- Director's Message
- Table of Contents
- Strategic Goals: Science, Facilities & Technology
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Strategic Goal #1, Strategic Priority #1:
Exploring atmospheric, Earth System, and solar processes, variability, and change -
Strategic Goal #1, Strategic Priority #2:
Investigating the interaction of the atmosphere, the broader Earth system, and human society -
Strategic Goal #1, Strategic Priority #3:
Improving prediction of weather, climate, and other atmospheric phenomena -
Strategic Goal #1, Strategic Priority #4:
Developing community models -
Strategic Goal #5, Strategic Priority #1:
Enabling innovative field experiments and measurement campaigns -
Strategic Goal #5, Strategic Priority #2:
Developing new instrumentation
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Strategic Goal #1, Strategic Priority #1:
- Research Catalog
ESSL Director's Message
Guy Brasseur
ESSL Director
Dear Colleagues:
The Earth and Sun Systems Laboratory (ESSL) was established in October 2004 to develop an ambitious research program and to address some of the fundamental scientific questions that are directly related to major environmental challenges the world is facing. The overall objective of the Laboratory is to perform fundamental studies of the dynamics of the Earth and Sun Systems across spatial and temporal scales, and to assess how natural forcing processes and human-driven perturbations affect the evolution of the Earths Systems and ultimately the habitability of our planet.
By performing an integrated study of the Earth and Sun Systems and the changes occurring in these systems, ESSL will provide key knowledge needed to develop a sustainable future for humankind and to respond to environmental crises such as climate change. Specifically, the Laboratory will study the fundamental processes that determine the evolution of the Earth and Sun Systems, develop the tools and community facilities needed to observe and analyze these processes, and to predict their evolution. This requires a full understanding of the processes that determine the variations in the Suns radiative energy, of the mechanisms that determine the effects of solar radiation on the Earths environment as well as of the interactions that exist between the physical, biological and chemical processes in the coupled atmosphere, land and ocean system. The ultimate goal is to acquire the fundamental knowledge necessary to respond to global and regional environmental changes and to help societies to develop a sustainable future.
The Earth and Sun Systems laboratory (ESSL) includes four scientific Divisions (the Atmospheric Chemistry Division (ACD), the Climate and Global Dynamics Division (CGD), the High Altitude Observatory (HAO), and the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division (MMM)) as well as the Institute for Integrative and Multidisciplinary Earth Studies (TIIMES).
As you will notice from the different detailed web pages that constitute the 2007 Annual Report, ESSL scientists accomplished a lot of exciting science in the last year. A major achievement has been the contribution of the ESSL scientists to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) process. The Community Climate System Model (CCSM version 3) has been used to successfully reproduce the evolution of climate since the pre-industrial era, and to provide projections of the climate during the next 100 years, based on possible greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.
The Earth system includes the atmosphere, ocean, land surface, cryosphere and the human system. Complex interactions take place within each compartment, and also between them. Transport of mass, momentum and energy within the Earth system are driven by the energy provided by the Sun. A challenge for ESSL is to understand the processes that contribute to the dynamics of the Earth and Sun systems, and to predict the complex evolution of this system across timescales. Figure provided by M. Andreae, MPI-Chemistry, Germany.
High resolution figure
The development of the Weather and Research Forecast Model (WRF) has continued; this model is now used in many countries as a community tool by a large number of researchers in academic institutions and by operational weather forecast centers. New, exciting results are emerging from the observations made during the field campaign in Mexico City (MIRAGE/MILAGRO). The purpose of this project was to characterize the chemical/physical transformations and the ultimate fate of pollutants exported from large urban areas, and to assess the current and future impacts of these exported pollutants on regional and global air quality, ecosystems, and climate.
TllMES was created to conduct and promote Earth science research across disciplines. The Institute promotes interactions for new and current initiatives associated with multidisciplinary Earth studies to be fostered, grown, and integrated. Beside managing cross-divisional Projects with large university participation, including the Biogeosciences initiative, the project on Water Across Scales, the Upper Troposphere/Lower Stratosphere initiative, and THORPEX, an international program aimed at improving weather forecasts, TIIMES started to plan for a major multidisciplinary field and modeling study called BEACHON, whose purpose is to better quantify the interactions between the physical climate and the biogeochemical systems in a water-limited environment.
ESSL has, of course, great plans for the future. In 2008, seven priority themes have been identified by the Laboratory:
- Climate prediction with an emphasis on seasonal to decadal timescales.
- Biosphere-Hydrosphere-Atmosphere interactions with the development of an experimental project to assess the role do the biosphere on the water, carbon and nitrogen cycles, and specifically on organic aerosol, cloud and photo-oxidant processes.
- The water system with the initiation jointly with SERE of the SWANS study to examine the impact of climate change on snowpack changes in Western Colorado, and the resulting effects on water resources and management.
- Advanced weather research and forecasting system with the expected release of a new version of the WRF model and new data assimilation systems and the development of HiFi, a new project to better forecast hurricane intensity and structure.
- Space weather with the completion of the first version of a new heliosphere model and further development of the coupled magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere (CMIT) model.
- Chemical weather with an emphasis on the development of an assimilation and prediction system for chemical species and aerosols, as well as an application of this system to the region of Mexico where the MIRAGE/MILAGRO field study took place.
- Integration and synthesis through the development of comprehensive Earth system models that couple the physical, chemical and biological processes in a simple framework, and examine the importance of coupling and feedbacks that affect the fate of the planet.
In addition, the development of version 4 of the CCSM by the end of 2008 in preparation for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change- Assessment Report 5 (IPCC AR5) is on the agenda of the Laboratory. Another important priority is the development of a Nested Regional Climate Model (NRCM) to study the seamless transition between weather and climate processes. Implementation of field observations, addressing interdisciplinary questions, including the interactions between dynamical, chemical, radiative and microphysical processes in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere are also important priorities for the next 3 years.
Guy P. Brasseur
Associate Director, NCAR
Director, Earth and Sun Systems Laboratory