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Opinion: Optimizing climate models with process knowledge, resolution, and artificial intelligence

delete2024-06-19
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OA
AI
T
Tapio Schneider *
L
L. Ruby Leung
R
Robert C. J. Wills
DOI:10.5194/acp-24-7041-2024delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Accelerated progress in climate modeling is urgently needed for proactive and effective climate change adaptation. The central challenge lies in accurately representing processes that are small in scale yet climatically important, such as turbulence and cloud formation. These processes will not be explicitly resolvable for the foreseeable future, necessitating the use of parameterizations. We propose a balanced approach that leverages the strengths of traditional process-based parameterizations and contemporary artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods to model subgrid-scale processes. This strategy employs AI to derive data-driven closure functions from both observational and simulated data, integrated within parameterizations that encode system knowledge and conservation laws. In addition, increasing the resolution to resolve a larger fraction of small-scale processes can aid progress toward improved and interpretable climate predictions outside the observed climate distribution. However, currently feasible horizontal resolutions are limited to O ( 10 km ) because higher resolutions would impede the creation of the ensembles that are needed for model calibration and uncertainty quantification, for sampling atmospheric and oceanic internal variability, and for broadly exploring and quantifying climate risks. By synergizing decades of scientific development with advanced AI techniques, our approach aims to significantly boost the accuracy, interpretability, and trustworthiness of climate predictions.
Keywords:
EARTH SYSTEM
BOUNDARY-LAYER
PART I
EMERGENT CONSTRAINTS
THERMAL-EQUILIBRIUM
MOIST CONVECTION
PARAMETERIZATION
ENTRAINMENT
ATMOSPHERE
TURBULENCE

Journal

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics cover
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
IF:
5.1
Papers:
1.4W
Citations:
6.5W

Organization

P
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Scholars:
9.0K
Papers: 6.3K
Citations: 14
C
California Institute of Technology
Scholars:
2.9W
Papers: 2.5W
Citations: 4.9W
U
united states department of energy (doe)
Scholars:
11.3W
Papers: 9.6W
Citations: 246
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