Researchers Work to Model the Local Impact of Global Climate Change

While the use of computers has enables scientists to create more accurate models to aid in atmospheric prediction and assess the future potential of global climate change, the resolution of the current models is still lacking. One researcher, Masao Kanamitsu, is trying to improve upon that.

A veteran of the atmospheric modeling world and a leading researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Kanamitsu and others are trying to create computer models which have a better resolution than the current models with a scale of 62 miles per grid point.

While the current level of resolution works relatively well for large global predictions, it is less accurate for very localized weather. “It’s difficult to accurately examine how river flows have changed over the last 50 years, because one grid point may contain many rivers,” said Kanamitsu in an interview published by the National Science Foundation.

Using the second largest supercomputer ‘Ranger’ at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, Kanamitsu fills mathematical formulas with data including heat, radiation and the rotation of the Earth to create more localized climate models with a higher degree of resolution.

“You’re given large-scale, coarse-resolution data, and you have to find a way to get the small-scale detail,” Kanamitsu said.

According to the NSF article, Kanamitsu is currently crafting models for California. Because of the many microclimates throughout the state, and because small-scale weather patterns have such a big influence on the weather patterns, the state is a great opportunity to test and fine tune the models.

So far, with his approach which uses detailed local information like vegetation, river flows and the topography, Kanamitsu has been able to improve the resolution of his climate models from the 62 mile standard down to 6 miles per grid point.

The complete NSF article is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=121642&WT.mc_id=USNSF_1