The Educational Global Climate Model or EdGCM is a fully functional global climate model (GCM) that has been ported for use on desktop computers (Windows PCs and Macs). It operates through a graphical user interface and is integrated with a relational database and scientific visualization utilities, all of which aim at helping improve the quality of teaching and understanding of climatology by making real-world research experiences more accessible. EdGCM is designed to permit teachers and students to conduct in-depth investigations of past, present and future climate scenarios in a manner that is essentially identical to the techniques used by national and international climate research organizations.
Components of the EdGCM suite include forms to set up climate model experiments, a control panel to run, pause, and stop the GCM, tools to post-process raw computer output into meaningful climate data, scientific visualization software, and utilities for organizing data, images, and experiment sets.
EdGCM was developed at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies as a joint project of Columbia University and NASA scientists and programmers. The Global Climate Model at the core of EdGCM is GISS Model II. During the 1980s and early 1990s this GCM was one of NASA's primary climate research tools. Results from the model have appeared in hundreds of scientific publications.
The coarser resolution of the climate model in EdGCM (8° x 10°, latitude x longitude) makes it inexpensive to run. But, because it contains most of the key atmospheric physics of modern GCMs, EdGCM is also used by climate researchers who do not have access to the most recent GCM versions.
Numerical climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the important drivers of climate, including atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. They are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the climate system to projections of future climate. Climate models may also be qualitative models and also narratives, largely descriptive, of possible futures.
A general circulation model (GCM) is a type of climate model. It employs a mathematical model of the general circulation of a planetary atmosphere or ocean. It uses the Navier–Stokes equations on a rotating sphere with thermodynamic terms for various energy sources. These equations are the basis for computer programs used to simulate the Earth's atmosphere or oceans. Atmospheric and oceanic GCMs are key components along with sea ice and land-surface components.
The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately 6.5 miles (10.5 km) northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC employs approximately 10,000 civil servants and contractors. Named in recognition of American rocket propulsion pioneer Robert H. Goddard, it is one of ten major NASA field centers. GSFC is partially within the former Goddard census-designated place; it has a Greenbelt mailing address.
William Michael Connolley is a British software engineer, writer, and blogger on climatology. Until December 2007 he was Senior Scientific Officer in the Physical Sciences Division in the Antarctic Climate and the Earth System project at the British Antarctic Survey, where he worked as a climate modeller. After that he became a software engineer for Cambridge Silicon Radio.
Roy Warren Spencer is a meteorologist, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite. He has served as senior scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. He is known for his satellite-based temperature monitoring work, for which he was awarded the American Meteorological Society's Special Award. Spencer disagrees with the scientific consensus that most global warming in the past 50 years is the result of human activity, instead believing that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have caused some warming, but that influence is small compared to natural variations in global average cloud cover.
Radiative forcing is the change in energy flux in the atmosphere caused by natural or anthropogenic factors of climate change as measured in watts per meter squared. It is a scientific concept used to quantify and compare the external drivers of change to Earth's energy balance. System feedbacks and internal variability are related concepts, encompassing other factors that also influence the direction and magnitude of imbalance.
James Edward Hansen is an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in climatology, his 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. In recent years, he has become a climate activist to mitigate the effects of global warming, on a few occasions leading to his arrest.
The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is a laboratory in the Earth Sciences Division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center affiliated with the Columbia University Earth Institute. The institute is located at Columbia University in New York City. It was named after Robert H. Goddard, American engineer, professor, physicist and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket.
Gavin A. Schmidt is a British climatologist, climate modeler and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, and co-founder of the award-winning climate science blog RealClimate.
The Earth Institute is a research institute at Columbia University that was established in 1995. Its stated mission is to address complex issues facing the planet and its inhabitants, with a focus on sustainable development. With an interdisciplinary approach, this includes research in climate change, geology, global health, economics, management, agriculture, ecosystems, urbanization, energy, hazards, and water. The Earth Institute's activities are guided by the idea that science and technological tools that already exist could be applied to greatly improve conditions for the world's poor, while preserving the natural systems that support life on Earth.
In climate science, a biosphere model, is used to model the biosphere of Earth, and can be coupled with atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) for modelling the entire climate system. It has been suggested that terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) are a more inclusive term than land surface models (LSMs). The representation of roots in TBMs, however, remains relatively crude. Particularly, the dynamic functions of roots and phylogenetic basis of water uptake remain largely absent in TBMs.
Roger Willis Daley was a British meteorologist known particularly for his work on data assimilation.
Jagadish Shukla is an Indian meteorologist and Distinguished University Professor at George Mason University in the United States.
Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) is a NASA environmental monitoring satellite that measures soil moisture across the planet. It is designed to collect a global 'snapshot' of soil moisture every 2 to 3 days. With this frequency, changes from specific storms can be measured while also assessing impacts across seasons of the year. SMAP was launched on 31 January 2015. It was one of the first Earth observation satellites developed by NASA in response to the National Research Council's Decadal Survey.
Inez Fung is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of California, Berkeley, jointly appointed in the department of earth and planetary science and the department of environmental science, policy and management. She is also the co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment.
Cynthia E. Rosenzweig is an American agronomist and climatologist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, located at Columbia University, "who helped pioneer the study of climate change and agriculture." She is an adjunct senior research scientist at the Columbia Climate School and has over 300 publications, over 80 peer-reviewed articles, has authored or edited eight books. She has also served in many different organizations working to develop plans to manage climate change, at the global level with the IPCC as well as in New York City after Hurricane Sandy.
The Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) initiative is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) virtual institute designed to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in the search for life on exoplanets. Led by the Ames Research Center, the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NExSS will help organize the search for life on exoplanets from participating research teams and acquire new knowledge about exoplanets and extrasolar planetary systems.
The IBM System/360 Model 91 was announced in 1964 as a competitor to the CDC 6600. Functionally, the Model 91 ran like any other large-scale System/360, but the internal organization was the most advanced of the System/360 line, and it was the first IBM computer to support out-of-order instruction execution. It ran OS/360 as its operating system. It was designed to handle high-speed data processing for scientific applications. This included space exploration, theoretical astronomy, sub-atomic physics and global weather forecasting.
Kate Marvel is a climate scientist and science writer based in New York City. She is a senior scientist at Project Drawdown and was formerly an associate research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Engineering's Department of Applied Physics and Mathematics.
Shian-Jiann Lin is a Taiwanese-American atmospheric scientist. He is currently the head of the Weather and Climate Dynamics Division at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the lead developer of the GFDL Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere Dynamical Core (FV3). and a lead developer or key contributor to several weather and climate models developed using FV3.
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