Development of a Regional Arctic Climate System Model

A regional arctic climate system model (RACM) is currently under development that couples existing off-the-shelf atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and land component models. The atmospheric model used in RACM is a version of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model that has been optimized for the polar regions. The ocean and sea ice models are the same as those used in the NCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM3), although used on a regional domain, and are the Los Alamos National Laboratory POP ocean model and CICE sea ice model. Land surface processes and hydrology will be represented by the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model. These four climate system component models are coupled using the NCAR CCSM coupler CPL7. The simulation domain of RACM covers the entire pan-arctic region and includes all sea ice covered regions in the Northern Hemisphere and all terrestrial drainage basins that flow into the Arctic Ocean. This presentation will discuss the need for a coupled regional Arctic climate system model, the scientific objectives of the project, the current status of RACM, and provide some preliminary results from the model components and coupled model.