UK Earth System Model General Assembly goes Virtual

The UK Earth System Model General Assembly, that was to be held at University of Leicester, successfully took place online with over 100 participants.

The UK Earth System Model (UKESM) is the UK’s next-generation climate model, developed in collaboration between NERC and the Met Office. An Earth System Model is an advanced climate model, incorporating “Earth System” processes and feedbacks related to biogeochemical cycles.

The project initially runs from 2013-2021 and has delivered the first version of the model, UKESM1, which is being used for the UK’s ESM contribution to the next international Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) which will feed directly into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process.

As part of the NERC Long-Term Science Multi-Centre (LTSM), scientists from the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) are heavily involved in developing, applying and analysing UKESM. The UK General Assembly is an annual event where all project partners can convene, discuss updates/developments and present science results generated using the model. The event was originally scheduled to be hosted in the School of Physics and Astronomy in June but due to the pandemic, was successfully moved online with over 100 participants being involved over 2 days.

Highlights of the meeting involved invited presentations on topics such as “Investigating abrupt, potentially irreversible changes in the Earth system” and “Allowable carbon budgets for meeting key policy targets”. These talks were complemented by international experts giving their “perspectives on future priorities for Earth system modelling and science” and a whole day of science presentations from the UKESM community looking at everything from wildfires to melting sea-ice.

The figure at the top of this post shows preliminary results from the model for December-January-February (left) and June-July-August (right), from a study that examines the projected change in land surface temperature when the average global temperature has reached a global warming threshold (GWT) of 2°C above the 1850-1900 average. Increases in temperature of over 6°C are projected at high northern latitudes. UKESM reaches this state in the early 2030s for a plausible climate scenario with only a modest change in climate policies. Other models can take as long as 2050 to get to a similar state, demonstrating the need for a large ensemble of models from the international community.