“The skill of models in predicting sea level change on decadal timescales is high, and we already have actionable projections on these timescales. We should be emphasizing that fact in discussions with community members, stakeholders, and decisionmakers.”

Quit Worrying About Uncertainty in Sea Level Projections

Article in Nature suggests methane has a greater effect on the climate than the IPCC are suggesting.

New Scientist: Every heatwave occurring today is more intense due to climate change

New Scientist: Every heatwave occurring today is more intense due to climate change

You can request the original article from Imperial College: https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/97290
TITLE: Extreme weather impacts of climate change: an attribution perspective
'Request a copy' is on the top right of the Spiral page.

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Oceans are warming faster than ever. Here’s what could come next.
https://wapo.st/3Deg6zK

I trust that OpenIFS will help to predict the effects of the larger and more powerful hurricanes.

That's no surprise. Previous peer-reviewed papers in the journals have highlighted the uptake of heat by the oceans. This paper back in 2013 by authors at ECMWF for example looked at the heating in the oceans: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/grl.50382

Unfortunately OpenIFS does not include the ocean model that the ECMWF IFS operational model does. This was done to reduce its complexity to make it more portable and easier to use by universities. The coupled Hadley Centre model (HADCM3) would be better for this type of study. OpeniFS uses observed sea-surface temperature fields instead. Though these could in principle be changed to mimic ocean heating there would be no feedback from the model atmosphere to the ocean, so it would be limited study and not wholly realistic.

Thanks, I think the new study just updated it to show the accelerated heating in the last 10 years.
But doesn't OpenIFS still predict storms? If not, what are you doing with it? I have not seen a description for a while, but maybe I missed it.

Yes, OpenIFS is a weather prediction model based on the operational forecast model ECMWF IFS. It predicts storms and extreme weather.

The lack of an ocean model in OpenIFS (but not the IFS) means that the storm tracks will have errors, this is seen more for typhoons and hurricanes which have a cooling effect on the sea surface which alters their track. As OpenIFS doesn't have an ocean model, only analysed sea-surface temperature fields, the model's atmosphere doesn't get that feedback.

As OpenIFS doesn't have an ocean model, only analysed sea-surface temperature fields, the model's atmosphere doesn't get that feedback.

If it is just a question of memory, let us try the whole thing. I have 128GB waiting to be used on one machine, and could do two easily enough.
(But I get the impression that it is not quite so simple.)

If it is just a question of memory, let us try the whole thing. I have 128GB waiting to be used on one machine, and could do two easily enough.
(But I get the impression that it is not quite so simple.)

I have 64 GBytes that can be used on my main (Linux) machine.* For everything. I currently run 11 work units at a time but reduce ths to 8 work-units in the summer (cooling issue). Normally I allow up to 4 ClimatePrediction, 4 WCG, 4 Rosetta, 2 Universe, and 2 MilkyWay to run at a time. Of course the total limit of 11 (or 8) applies, so not all of these can run at the same time. Both Universe and Milky-Way run at very low priority, so they do not run if more important work is available.

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* I remember when the biggest hard drive I could get was 2 GBytes, and that seemed amazingly large. Now I have way more RAM than that.

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As OpenIFS doesn't have an ocean model, only analysed sea-surface temperature fields, the model's atmosphere doesn't get that feedback.

If it is just a question of memory, let us try the whole thing. I have 128GB waiting to be used on one machine, and could do two easily enough.
(But I get the impression that it is not quite so simple.)

You're right it's not just a question of memory. We did consider using a more complex model for CPDN but the problem is all the requirements go up; memory, runtime, data in, data out. It would seriously limit the configurations of the model and when research groups running these models have access to national supercomputers or local compute clusters, it's hard to justify the time it would take to make the model run under boinc.

There are still plenty of good research questions that can be explored with a less complex model, by that I mean one which does not fully represent all the feedbacks in the earth system. It's helpful to look at how such models behave in order to provide some explanation of the behaviour of climate models. For example, I could use OpenIFS with sea-surface temperature fields that have a warming imposed near the US coast that increases with time (let's say, to mimic warming of the Gulf Stream). It would then be interesting to see how this affects NH European weather events. Another experiment might take sea-surface temperature fields from climate model output, say, 30yrs in the future and apply it to current day forecasts. There are caveats to doing this of course but it can help to understand what the climate model is doing.

Worth listening to this series on BBC Radio4 Rethink 0900 and 21:30 Monday to Friday this week then on line. (UCT)

This is an interesting article I saw today.

The Upper Atmosphere Is Cooling, Prompting New Climate Concerns

A new study reaffirming that global climate change is human-made also found the upper atmosphere is cooling dramatically because of rising CO2 levels. Scientists are worried about the effect this cooling could have on orbiting satellites, the ozone layer, and Earth’s weather.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/climate-change-upper-atmosphere-cooling?fbclid=IwAR1wUDdPW5dpxEiKdZDLWCK5BD0jdxfiJ90UXix7d1KMapvqZZu-K8iPaAo

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This is an interesting article I saw today.

The Upper Atmosphere Is Cooling, Prompting New Climate Concerns

A new study reaffirming that global climate change is human-made also found the upper atmosphere is cooling dramatically because of rising CO2 levels. Scientists are worried about the effect this cooling could have on orbiting satellites, the ozone layer, and Earth’s weather.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/climate-change-upper-atmosphere-cooling?fbclid=IwAR1wUDdPW5dpxEiKdZDLWCK5BD0jdxfiJ90UXix7d1KMapvqZZu-K8iPaAo

A very interesting read, Jean-David. I'll have to brush up on my atmospheric layer science (and the relevant maths).

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UK is to rejoin Horizon research programme Is there any chance CPDN might benefit from this?

UK is to rejoin Horizon research programme Is there any chance CPDN might benefit from this?

Not immediately. Having personal experience of applying for EU funding, it's a long process and very time-consuming. It's a good point though and I will see what CPDN think.

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CPDN Visiting Scientist

Medicane, the Mediterranean tropical-like Cyclone (TLC)

There's been articles about forecasts showing potential for a tropical cyclone-like 'medicane' forming in Sept/2023. This is partly driven by sea-surface temperatures reaching the critical temperature for hurricane formation.

Excellent write-up here: https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/medicane-2023-italy-greece-ionian-sea-tropical-cyclone-flooding-malta-sicily-mk/

It's thought that these are more likely as the planet warms.

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CPDN Visiting Scientist