If you are using Navigator 4.x or Internet Explorer 4.x, this site will not render correctly!
gfdl's home page > products and services > data portal > DecCen Coupled Climate Models
DecCen Coupled Climate Models
![[NOAA bullet]](https://www.webharvest.gov/peth04/20041015034842im_/http://www.gfdl.gov/~kd/images/noaabullet.gif)
A recent history of GFDL's global coupled climate models
At different times during the past twenty years or so, a handful of global atmosphere-ocean general circulation models ( AOGCMs ) have been referred to casually as "The GFDL climate model". This casual, non-specific terminology can lead to some confusion, since people may not realize that the term has been applied to different models that have different features and yield different results. This brief discussion is intended to provide some introductory information about these different models, with an emphasis on the current family of workhorse models, the GFDL CM2.x models.
the CM2.x models
In 2004, a new family of GFDL climate models ( the CM2.x family ) was first used to conduct climate research. The GFDL CM2.x models have become the workhorse model for GFDL's climate research. They are being applied to topics focusing on decadal-to-centennial ( deccen ) time scale issues ( including multi-century control experiments and climate change projections ), as well as to seasonal-to-interannual ( si ) problems, such as El Niņo research and experimental forecasts.
The CM2.x models represent a clean break from previous generations of GFDL climate models. All the main coupled model components ( the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and land surface models ) were developed from new code sets. To use a genetics analogy, if one views the Fortran source code as being our numerical models' DNA, the CM2.x models share minimal genetic material with previous GFDL models. In other words, the CM2.x models belong to a completely different species than the older GFDL R30 and R15 coupled models. Accordingly, one should not expect results drawn from the newer CM2.x model experiments to be entirely consistent with those drawn from previous GFDL R30 and R15 experimental studies.
Starting in October 2004, results from a series of experiment conducted using the first member of the CM2.x model family ( cleverly named "GFDL CM2" or "CM2.0" ), are being made available via the internet. (Results from the news CM2.1 will become available in the coming months.) These experiments are driven by forcings consistent with those requested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) for their fourth assessment report ( AR4 ), and are applicable to research projects associated with the U.S. Climate Change Science Program ( CCSP ). CM2.0 model output files will be available from the GFDL Data Portal and a subset of the output will be included among the IPCC Working Group 1 Data served from The Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison ( PCMDI ) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Data will be first appear at PCMDI and later at GFDL.
Some relevant CM2.x FAQs
- In what key ways do the CM2.x family of models differ from the older R15 and R30 models?
- How does the CM2.1 model differ from the CM2.0 model?
- Which model is better: CM2 or CM2.1?
- What is the difference between CM2 and CM2.0?
- Why has GFDL run climate experiments using both the CM2.0 and CM2.1 models?
- Other FAQs