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The mission of the Climate and Global Dynamics (CGD) Division is to
understand Earth?s climate system and to develop the capability of
predicting the evolution of the climate system to the degree
possible. This will require a substantial effort in study of the
observed data for the components of the system, the atmosphere,
oceans, land surface, sea ice, and the biogeochemistry of these
physical components. Because the observations are incomplete and
inadequate, understanding the climate system will also require that
models be developed to simulate the components of the system and to
couple these models together realistically so that the interactions
among the components and their resulting variability can be
successfully simulated and studied. Detailed comparison of the
performance of the models with observations will be required, and once
a reasonable degree of faithfulness to observations is achieved, the
models will be used to perform experiments to determine how the
climate system might evolve in response to anthropogenic changes in
the environment, such as changing the emissions of various gases into
the atmosphere or changing the land surface cover through
agriculture. Since the climate system is chaotic in nature, there are
limits to prediction of the evolution of the system, but these limits
are, at present, unknown. We will investigate the predictability of
aspects of the climate system, and when possible, develop models for
use in prediction activities.
Website: "http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/"
[Summary provided by UCAR.]
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