GFDL - Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

Skip to main content

Climate and Ecosystems Near-Term Plans

Our research plans for the next several years will focus on producing the integrations needed in support of CMIP5 and IPCC AR5. We will also be making runs to investigate various scientific questions which will arise from those runs and elsewhere. These studies include a suite of investigations of the earth system:

  • Land use impact on carbon changes
  • Increasing CO2 impacts on ecosystems
  • Oceanic heat and carbon uptake Climate-Carbon cycle feedbacks
  • Climate – Living Marine Resource (e.g. fisheries) interactions
  • Water availability changes
  • Paleo-climate
Over the next several years, using the analysis of the integrations outlined above, we will also be improving our models. These improvements include:
  • Close additional biogeochemical cycles
    • N, P, CH4, Fe, etc.
  • Improve representation of biodiversity
  • Improve components
    • Dust, sea salt, fire, land use
  • Migrate to CM3-based ESM
  • Investigation of high resolution
    • Coastal processes
    • Seasonal-decadal scale variability analysis/prediction