earth strongsystem modelsstrong of intermediate complexity closing the.pdfVIP

Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity: Closing the Gap in the Spectrum of Climate System Models 1,2 3 3 1 3 Martin Claussen , Michel Crucifix , Thierry Fichefet , Andrey Ganopolski , Huges Goosse , 4 3 4 5 6 Gerrit Lohmann , Marie-France Loutre , Frank Lunkeit , Igor Mohkov , Lawrence A. Mysak , 1,5 7 8 6 9 Vladimir Petoukhov , Thomas Stocker , Peter Stone , Zhaoming Wang , Andrew Weaver , Susanne L. Weber10 1 Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung, Germany 2 Institut für Meteorologie, FU-Berlin, Germany 3 Université Catholique Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium 4 Meteorologisches Institut, Univ. Hamburg, Germany 5 A.M. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia 6 Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, McGill University, Montreal, Canada 7 Climate and Environmental Physics, Univ. Bern, Switzerland 8 Dep. of Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA 9 School of Earth and Ocean Sciences,University of Victoria, Canada 10 Royal Netherland Meteorological Institute, The Netherlands Abstract We propose to replace the classical pyramid of climate models by a spectrum of climate system models. The spectrum includes an indicator which characterizes the number of components of the climate system, including the interaction among them, being explicitly described in a model. The location of several model types in the new spectrum is specified. In particular, the location of the so-called Earth system models of intermediate complexity (EMICs) is discussed. It be- comes apparent that there exists a broad range of EMICs. In some of them, the nu