UKESM General Assembly 2021

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The UKESM General Assembly 2021 took place online on 8 & 9th June and was attended by over 60 participants.

The meeting provided an update on progress for the UKESM project, a look forward for the final year of the extension of the project and a series of UKESM related science talks. Presentation slides and videos of the main talks are available on this page.

UKESM Progress Updates

by Colin Jones, Jane Mulcahy, Marc Stringer, Robin Smith, Jeremy Walton, Valeriu Predoi

Key highlights over the last year of UKESM included the development of UKESM1.1:

  • A new updated version of UKESM1, UKESM1.1, is now frozen and is currently being ported to ARCHER2 for use by wider community.
  • A number of DECK and ScenarioMIP simulations have been performed (with RFMIP-light ERF simulations underway)
  • Model gives a much improved simulation of historical temperature mainly attributed to a lower aerosol forcing.
  • Generally the model performs better or shows neutral change across a wide variety of important climate-relevant metrics
  • Impact on future projections is small but initial indications shows UKESM1.1 tends to warm less in SSP126 and SSP370

Looking forwards, plans for UKESM2 are being considered. UKESM2 will be built on HadGEM3-GC5 (available ~ spring 2022, and should be frozen by the end of 2022). The aim is for UKESM2 to be “operational” / science ready about the end of 2024/start of 2025. Some of the proposed developments include:

  • Workhorse will stay at N96L85 – ORCA1L75
  • Have an exploratory configuration at higher resolution (using hybrid approach)
  • Ability to run model with emissions of CO2, CH4 and some portion of Nr/N2O
  • Interactive Antarctic and Greenland ice as standard
  • Wildfires interactive and coupled to carbon cycle and atmospheric composition
  • Thermal acclimation of plant photosynthesis
  • Improved representation of human land use
  • Nitrate aerosol
  • Improved stratospheric ozone
UKESM GA2021-Progress Overview SlidesDownload

Science Talks

A series of UKESM-related science talks were presented by the UKESM Core Team and collaborators showing some of the latest results using UKESM1:

SESSION 3 – Science Talks

David Schroeder Reducing key weaknesses in current sea ice models for climate simulations

Antony Siahaan Some future Antarctic projections from UKESM1-ice scenario simulations

Victoria Lee Can icebergs calved from Greenland’s glaciers explain North Atlantic freshwater anomalies in UKESM1.ice?

Chantelle Burton South American fires and their impacts on ecosystems increase with continued emissions

Douglas Kelley Observational constraint on likely future shifts in fire regimes using JULES-ES/ISIMIP2b setup

SESSION 4 – Science Talks

Jeremy Walton Modeling the Climate Response to COVID-19 Emissions Reductions using UKESM1

Anthony Jones Implementing a nitrate scheme into UKCA and UKESM

James Keeble Recent improvements to stratospheric ozone in the UKESM1 model in preparation for CCMI-2022

Ranjini Swaminathan Physical Climate Changes at Global Warming Thresholds as seen in the UK Earth System Model

Chelsey Baker Carbon Sequestration Pathways and Efficiency in the North Atlantic Ocean

Adrian Martin Linking a global benthic ecosystem model to UKESM1

Andrew Yool Diversity in biological carbon pump representation and its response to future climate change