This project aims to improve long term global climate simulations by resolving ocean mesoscale activity and the corresponding response in the atmosphere. The main computational objectives are to perform and assess Community Earth System Model (CESM) simulations with the new Community Atmospheric Model High-Order Methods Modeling Environment spectral element dynamical core, including the use of static mesh refinement to focus on oceanic fronts. The climate science objectives are (1) to improve the coupling of ocean fronts and the atmospheric boundary layer via investigations of dependency on model resolution and stability functions, (2) to understand and simulate the ensuing tropospheric response that has recently been documented in observations, and (3) to investigate the relationship of ocean frontal variability to low frequency climate variability and the accompanying storm tracks in high resolution simulations. The project will also develop a new Earth System Modeling tool to investigate the atmospheric response to fronts by selectively filtering surface flux fields in the CESM coupler.

This is a collaborative multi-institution project consisting of computational scientists, climate scientists and climate model developers. It specifically aims at DOE objectives of advancing simulation and predictive capability of climate models through improvements in resolution and physical process representation.