Final Report: Fine-Mesh Treatment of the Land Component of a Global Climate Model, September 1, 1994 - August 31, 1998

The characteristics of land important for climate are very heterogeneous, as are the key atmospheric inputs to land, i.e. precipitation and radiation. To adequately represent this heterogeneity, state-of-the-art climate models should represent atmospheric inputs to land, land properties, and the dynamical changes of land at the highest resolution accessible by climate models. The research funded under this project focused on the development of an alternative approach to this problem in which a sub-mesh is imposed on each atmospheric model grid square. This allows representation of the land climate dynamics at a higher resolution than that achievable in the global atmospheric models. The high spatial detail of the fine-mesh treatment provides not only a more accurate representation of land processes to the atmospheric model, but also the opportunity for direct downscaling of the surface climate. The principal objectives were: (1) To complete the development of fine-mesh data structures in the VBATS model and its link to CCM2; (2) To improve BATS model parameterizations; (3) To complete and refine fine-mesh atmospheric parameterizations; and (4) To conduct sensitivity studies. The primary shift in goals has been to include and emphasize linkages to CCM3 which has been publicly released as of May 1996