CESM1(WACCM) Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering Large Ensemble Project

• Published in: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
• Main Authors: Tilmes, Simone, Richter, Jadwiga H., Kravitz, Ben, MacMartin, Douglas G., Mills, Michael J., Simpson, Isla R., Glanville, Anne S., Fasullo, John T., Phillips, Adam S., Lamarque, Jean-Francois, Tribbia, Joseph, Edwards, Jim, Mickelson, Sheri, Ghosh, Siddhartha
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: American Metereological Society 2018
• Subjects: Pacific; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1175/bams-d-17-0267.1

This paper describes the Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering Large Ensemble (GLENS) project, which promotes the use of a unique model dataset, performed with the Community Earth System Model, with the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model as its atmospheric component [CESM1(WACCM)], to investigate global and regional impacts of geoengineering. The performed simulations were designed to achieve multiple simultaneous climate goals, by strategically placing sulfur injections at four different locations in the stratosphere, unlike many earlier studies that targeted globally averaged surface temperature by placing injections in regions at or around the equator. This advanced approach reduces some of the previously found adverse effects of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering, including uneven cooling between the poles and the equator and shifts in tropical precipitation. The 20-member ensemble increases the ability to distinguish between forced changes and changes due to climate variability in global and regional climate variables in the coupled atmosphere, land, sea ice, and ocean system. We invite the broader community to perform in-depth analyses of climate-related impacts and to identify processes that lead to changes in the climate system as the result of a strategic application of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering. © 2018 American Meteorological Society. Final Form: 1 May 2018; Published Online: 12 December 2018. We thank Gary Strand and Ilana Stern, for publishing the model output on the NCAR Earth System Grid, and Alice Bertini, for offering software support in producing diagnostics for model results. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract DE-AC05-76RL01830. Jean-Francois Lamarque's participation was supported in part by NSF Award 1243107. The CESM project is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science (BER) of the U.S. Department of Energy. The National Center for Atmospheric ...