NCAR Models by Topic

Model Name Description Links to Further Information
Atmospheric Chemistry / Transport Models
MATCH The Model for Atmospheric Transport and Chemistry (MATCH)is an offline transport model. model website
MEGAN The Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN) is a modeling system for estimating emission and uptake (exchange) of gases between the atmosphere and terrestrial vegetation and soils (Nature). MEGAN uses an approach similar to previous models (e.g., BEIS, BEIS2 and GLOBEIS) but is intended to be easier to use and update and to incorporate into regional and global chemistry and transport models. model website
MOZART The Model for Ozone and Related chemical Tracers (MOZART) is a comprehensive global chemical transport model of atmospheric composition designed to simulate tropospheric chemical and transport processes. It is driven by standard meteorogical fields output from any number of meteorological centers (e.g. the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), or Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (DMAO)) or by fields generated from general circulation models. model website
TUV The Tropospheric Ultraviolet and Visible Radiation Model (TUV) is an interactive model (written in F77) for calculating solar visible and ultraviolet radiation in the Earth's atmosphere, with emphasis on the troposphere (lower atmosphere and surface). The model produces spectral irradiances and actinic fluxes, biologically weighted radiation, and photodissociation rate coefficients, for user-specified location, date, time, surface reflectivity and elevation, ozone column, cloud thickness, and aerosols. Extensive in-line documentation facilitates customization of the code for many different applications. The user must have F77 on their system in order to compile and run TUV, or download the pre-compiled Windows (98, XP) version. model website
SOCRATES The Simulation of Chemistry, Radiation, and Transport of Environmentally important Species (SOCRATES) is an interactive chemical dynamical radiative two-dimensional (2-D) model. model website
NCAR Master Mechanism The NCAR Master Mechanism is an explicit and detailed gas phase chemical mechanism combined with a box model solver. User inputs include species of interest, emissions, temperature, dilution, and boundary layer height. Any input parameter may be constrained with respect to time. Photolysis rates are calculated using the TUV model, included in the code package. The model is written in a mixture of F77 and Fortran90, and is managed using C-shell scripts. model website
Biogeosciences Models
Biome-BCG A terrestrial ecosystem process model. model website
CDAS The Carbon Data-Model Assimilation project is intended to bring observationalists and modelers together to form an integrated approach to improving our understanding of the global carbon cycle. model website
CREEP The Changing Relief and Evolving Ecosystem Project modelis a theoretical, process-response model that links ecosystem dynamics with geomorphology at the landscape scale. CREEP focuses on the interaction of soil aggregation and organic matter with downslope particle size distribution (percent sand, silt, and clay) and the formation of catena sequences, defined by Milne [1935] as a lateral distribution of chemical, physical, and biological soil properties along a hillslope. The CREEP model simulates edaphic controls on ecosystem dynamics by simulating the downslope movement of soil and nutrients while monitoring the effect on soil carbon accumulation. model website
LSM The Land Surface Model (LSM) is a model developed by Gordon Bonan to examine biogeophysical and biogeochemical land-atmosphere interactions, especially the effects of land surfaces on climate and atmospheric chemistry. It can be run coupled to an atmospheric model or uncoupled, in a stand-alone mode, if an atmospheric forcing is provided. The model runs on a spatial grid that can range from one point to global. The model was designed for coupling to atmospheric numerical models. Consequently, there is a compromise between computational efficiency and the complexity with which the necessary atmospheric, ecological, and hydrologic processes are parameterized. The model is not meant to be a detailed micrometeorological model, but rather a simplified treatment of surface fluxes that reproduces at minimal computational cost the essential characteristics of land-atmosphere interactions important for climate simulations. model website
Climate Models
CAM The Community Atmospheric Model (CAM) is the latest in a series of global atmosphere models developed at NCAR for the weather and climate research communities. CAM also serves as the atmospheric component of the Community Climate System Model (CCSM). model website
SCAM The CCSM CAM Single Column Model (SCAM) is the single column version of the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM). model website
CCSM The Community Climate System Model (CCSM) is a coupled climate model for simulating the earth's climate system. Composed of four separate models simultaneously simulating the earth's atmosphere, ocean, land surface and sea-ice, and one central coupler component, the CCSM allows researchers to conduct fundamental research into the earth's past, present and future climate states. model website
CRM The Climate Radiation Model is a standalone version of the radiation model used in the NCAR Community Climate Model (CCM). The CRM is composed of the actual subroutines from the CCM which have been modified as little as possible in order to run in a standalone mode. The CRM is freely available and is a useful tool for scientific studies of the Earth's solar and infrared energy budgets, greenhouse gas and aerosol radiative forcing, and column closure experiments. model website
CSIM The Community Sea Ice Model (CCSM) serves as the sea ice component of CCSM. It is the result of a community effort to develop a portable, efficient sea ice model that can be run coupled in a global climate model or uncoupled as a stand-alone ice model. It is a dynamic-thermodynamic model that includes a subgrid-scale ice thickness distribution, energy conserving thermodynamics, and elastic-viscous-plastic (EVP) dynamics. model website
MAGICC The Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC) consists of a suite of coupled gas-cycle, climate and ice-melt models integrated into a single software package. This software allows the user to determine changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations, global-mean surface air temperature and sea-level resulting from anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), reactive gases (CO, NOx, VOCs), the halocarbons (e.g. HCFCs, HFCs, PFCs) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). The years 1990 and 2100 are the default start and end output years used by the software, but they can be varied in MAGICC. model website
PCM The Parallel Climate Model (PCM) is a joint effort to develop a DOE-sponsored parallel climate model between Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the Naval Postgraduate School (NPG), the US Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab (CRREL) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). We have coupled the NCAR Community Climate Model version 3, the LANL Parallel Ocean Program, and a sea ice model from the Naval Postgraduate School together in a massively parallel computer environment. This is Version 1 of the PCM (PCM1). model website
Combined / Nested Models
NRCM (Climate/Weather) The Nested Regional Climate Model is a 2-way nested model that provides an integrating research tool essential to address upscaling and downscaling issues. When applied at the appropriate spatial scales and locales such models can resolve climate processes across wide spectrum of scales and reduce the errors associated with physics parameterizations. They also can properly represent spatial variations of climate forcing, such as topography, lakes, and land-sea contrast; and human influence, such as air pollution and land/water use. To address the full requirements, the nested models must include both global and regional models with two-way interactions. WRF and CCSM are ideal candidates for such coupling. model website
WACCM The Whole Atmmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) is a comprehensive numerical model, spanning the range of altitude from the Earth's surface to the thermosphere. The development of WACCM is an inter-divisional collaboration that unifies certain aspects of the upper atmospheric modeling of HAO, the middle atmosphere modeling of ACD, and the tropospheric modeling of CGD, using the NCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM) as a common numerical framework. model website 1
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Community Models
CCSM The Community Climate System Model (CCSM) is a coupled climate model for simulating the earth's climate system. Composed of four separate models simultaneously simulating the earth's atmosphere, ocean, land surface and sea-ice, and one central coupler component, the CCSM allows researchers to conduct fundamental research into the earth's past, present and future climate states. model website
WACCM The Whole Atmmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) is a comprehensive numerical model, spanning the range of altitude from the Earth's surface to the thermosphere. The development of WACCM is an inter-divisional collaboration that unifies certain aspects of the upper atmospheric modeling of HAO, the middle atmosphere modeling of ACD, and the tropospheric modeling of CGD, using the NCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM) as a common numerical framework. model website 1
model website 2
WRF-ARW The Weather Research and Forecasting Model - Advanced Research WRF version (WRF-ARW) is an advanced, community, mesoscale model designed to serve the research needs of the atmospheric science community. ARW offers portable code, both well-tested and experimental, that are appropriate for a wide range of applications, and for which we have the expertise and resources to support. ARW is versatile, cutting-edge in improvements and approaches, built with research community input, and guided by research community needs. The system offers idealized and real-data simulation capabilities, 3D-Var data assimilation, two-way interacting nested and movable grids, model coupling, and numerous physics options. New features are continuously being implemented and supported, as they are developed. model website
model website
Meteorology / Weather Prediction Models
AMPS The Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) is based on the experience of previous research into mesoscale modeling in polar regions by the Polar Meteorology Group of the Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University, the Pennsylvania State University (PSU)-National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Fifth-generation Mesoscale Model (MM5) has been modified for use in polar regions (referred to as the Polar MM5). The Polar MM5 is currently being used for synoptic and climate scale studies in the data sparse high latitudes. It is also being used to re-create the paleoclimate conditions over the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered most of North America about 20,000 years ago, prior to its retreat to what is present-day Greenland. The model is also used by forecasters as part of the National Science Foundation sponsored Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS; link provided below) to meet the operational and logistic needs of the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). model website
LES The Large Eddy Simulation (LES) simulates a critically important region in atmospheric and oceanic flows, the planetary boundary layer. Turbulence and in particular coherent structures embedded in PBL turbulence determine important fluxes of momentum, heat, and scalars at the surface and entrainment zone of the PBLs which in turn impact larger scale motions. We are (and have been) studying three-dimensional, time-dependent, PBL turbulence using turbulence-resolving numerical simulations and in particular Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) for a wide variety of geophysical flows. The NCAR LES code is freely available to the outside community. model website
WRF-ARW The Weather Research and Forecasting Model - Advanced Research WRF version (WRF-ARW) is an advanced, community, mesoscale model designed to serve the research needs of the atmospheric science community. ARW offers portable code, both well-tested and experimental, that are appropriate for a wide range of applications, and for which we have the expertise and resources to support. ARW is versatile, cutting-edge in improvements and approaches, built with research community input, and guided by research community needs. The system offers idealized and real-data simulation capabilities, 3D-Var data assimilation, two-way interacting nested and movable grids, model coupling, and numerous physics options. New features are continuously being implemented and supported, as they are developed. model website
model website
National Security Models
National Security Applications Program The National Security Applications Program at RAL has grown to include a combination of DOD, foreign, and private-industry projects. RAL’s objective is to improve meteorological support of homeland security needs through the use of new capabilities in high-resolution mesoscale modeling, short-term thunderstorm prediction, multi-dimensional integrated displays, numerical weather prediction and fine-scale regional and global climatology prediction. New technologies are in operational use at Army ranges (ATEC) and are being implemented in Washington, DC at the Pentagon, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). model website
Ocean Models
PBM The NCAR CSM Pacific Basin Model (PBM) is based on the upper equatorial ocean model of Gent and Cane (1989). It has been updated and improved in a variety of ways, perhaps most notably by the addition of the K-profile parameterization (KPP) boundary layer scheme of Large et at (1994). This model can be run as a coupled (i.e. as the global ocean component in a CSM configuration) or uncoupled (i.e. stand-alone) model. model website
POP The Parallel Ocean Program (POP) is based upon POP Version 1.4.3, which was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and is part of teh CCSM 3.0 release. Over the course of CCSM3 POP model development, there have been many small changes to the original POP 1.4.3 code in order to allow the code to conform to CCSM requirements. Also, some corrections have been applied, diagnostics have been added, and more substantial modifications have been made to the code to improve the model physics. Wherever possible, a deliberate effort has been made to alter the base POP 1.4.3 code as little as possible, mainly by adding new modules instead of integrating the additions into the original POP code. However, many of the CCSM-related requirements resulted in modifications to numerous existing POP modules. model website
Operational Models (development of)
The Joint Numerical Testbed The Joint Numerical Testbed (JNT) is a collaborative facility within the Research Applications Laboratory and a nationally distributive network of collaborators for developing, testing and validating weather prediction systems for various atmospheric parameters important to operational decision makers. It includes both evaluation of numerical weather prediction systems and on testing and evaluating Data Assimilation Systems, a component of Numerical Weather Prediction. model website
Solar Models
AMIE The Assimilative Mapping of Ionospheric Electrodynamics (AMIE) is an optimally constrained, weighted least-squares fit of electric potential distribution to diverse types of atmospheric observations. Knowledge of these distributions is important in many areas of magnetospheric, ionospheric, and thermospheric physics. model website
CRM The Climate Radiation Model is a standalone version of the radiation model used in the NCAR Community Climate Model (CCM). The CRM is composed of the actual subroutines from the CCM which have been modified as little as possible in order to run in a standalone mode. The CRM is freely available and is a useful tool for scientific studies of the Earth's solar and infrared energy budgets, greenhouse gas and aerosol radiative forcing, and column closure experiments. model website
GSWM The Global Scale Wave Model (GSWM) solves the linearized and extended Navier-Stokes equations for steady-state global temperature and wind perturbations. GSWM may be used to calculate an "unforced" planetary wave response for a specified period and zonal wavenumber, or the thermally-driven response for either a diurnal or semidiurnal atmospheric tide. model website
PIKAIA PIKAIA is a general purpose function optimization FORTRAN-77 subroutine based on a genetic algorithm. PIKAIA is a public domain software available electronically from the anonymous ftp archive of the High Altitude Observatory. The subroutine is particularly useful (and robust) in treating multimodal optimization problems. model website
TGCM The Thermosphere Ionosphere Electrodynamic General Circulation Models (TGCM) are three-dimensional, time-dependent models of the EARTH's neutral upper atmosphere. The model uses a finite differencing technique to obtain a self-consistent solution for the coupled, nonlinear equations of hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, continuity of the neutral gas and for the coupling between the dynamics and the composition. model website
Terrestrial Models
CLM The Community Land Model (CLM) formalizes and quantifies concepts of ecological climatology. Ecological climatology is an interdisciplinary framework to understand how natural and human changes in vegetation affect climate. It examines the physical, chemical, and biological processes by which terrestrial ecosystems affect and are affected by climate across a variety of spatial and temporal scales. The central theme is that terrestrial ecosystems, through their cycling of energy, water, chemical elements, and trace gases, are important determinants of climate. model website
DGVM The Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM) consists of a heavily modified version of the Lund-Potsdam-Jena DGVM (LPJ) of Sitch et al (2003) integrated within the CCSM land model. model website
LSM The Land Surface Model (LSM) is a model developed by Gordon Bonan to examine biogeophysical and biogeochemical land-atmosphere interactions, especially the effects of land surfaces on climate and atmospheric chemistry. It can be run coupled to an atmospheric model or uncoupled, in a stand-alone mode, if an atmospheric forcing is provided. The model runs on a spatial grid that can range from one point to global. The model was designed for coupling to atmospheric numerical models. Consequently, there is a compromise between computational efficiency and the complexity with which the necessary atmospheric, ecological, and hydrologic processes are parameterized. The model is not meant to be a detailed micrometeorological model, but rather a simplified treatment of surface fluxes that reproduces at minimal computational cost the essential characteristics of land-atmosphere interactions important for climate simulations. model website