Carbon Cycle and Land Surface Developments for the next generation UK Earth System Model.

Abstract:

The next generation UK Earth System Model (UKESM1) will be a community model in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre and the broader UK research community. The aim for the model is to provide demonstrable improvements over HadGEM2-ES in terms of process-level representations and ability to achieve benchmarks. The process developments for this model include an interactive nitrogen cycle, land use change, a wetland CH4 emissions scheme, improved physical permafrost representation, and vegetation-chemistry interactions including BVOCs. The use of emergent constraints and comprehensive benchmarking of the carbon cycle processes will improve our confidence in model projections from the UKESM1. In this presentation we provide an overview of these developments and their evaluation through a new benchmarking tool.