Topics In Climate Modeling (hb 2017)

The topics of climate change, weather prediction, atmospheric sciences and other related fields are gaining increased attention due to the possible impacts of changes in climate and weather upon the planet. Concurrently, the increasing ability to computationally model the governing partial differential equations that describe these various topics of climate has gained a great deal of attention as well. In the current book, several aspects of these topics are examined to provide another stepping stone in recent advances in the fields of study and also focal points of endeavor in the evolving technology. The design of the Eta model goes back to early 1970s, when its original dynamical core was designed following the philosophy of Akio Arakawa of emulating important properties of the atmospheric governing equations. The core's later major features were invented and implemented in the mid-1980s. Once a comprehensive physics package was added, the model became operational as a regional NWP model in the United States in 1993. Its use for regional climate projections followed later, for the South American region and then for a regional reanalysis over the North American region. Summary of the model's dynamical core is given, followed by that of its physics package. Results of experiments revealing the model's ability to generate added value even at large scales when run as a regional climate model (RCM) are summarized. The Eta model is applied on various climate scales seamlessly, from subseasonal, seasonal to multidecadal, from coarse 40 km up to high 5 km resolution. Examples of applications to various socioeconomic sectors, such as for hydropower management, crop yield forecasts, environmental and forest conservation, urban areas management, assessment of natural disaster risks, etc., are given. The Eta RCM capability to reproduce extreme climatic values is pointed out