NARCCAP: http://www.narccap.ucar.edu/
The North American Regional
Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) is an international program that
will serve the climate scenario needs of the United States, Canada, and
northern Mexico. NARCCAP is systematically investigating the uncertainties in
future climate projections on the regional level. NARCCAP closely matches the
regional climate models (RCMs) with multiple atmosphere-ocean general
circulation models (AOGCMs) along with the A2 scenario from the Special Report
on Emission Scenarios (SRES) over an area covering most of North America. NARCCAP
also validates the regional climate model performance by driving the RCMs with
reanalyses, which is similar to driving the models with observations. The basic
spatial resolution of the RCMs is 50 kilometers. This program includes RCMs
that were used in the European PRUDENCE program (HadRM3 and RegCM), the Canadian
Regional Climate Model (CRCM) as well as the NCEP regional spectral model
(RSM), MM5, and the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF).
AOGCMs being used include the
Hadley Centre HadCM3, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) CCSM, the
Canadian CGCM3 and the GFDL model. The resulting climate model runs form the
basis for multiple high-resolution climate scenarios that can be used in
climate change impact assessments in North America. NARCCAP also produces
high-resolution global time slice experiments based on the GFDL atmospheric
model and the NCAR atmospheric model (CAM3). They are compared with runs of the
regional models.
The National Science
Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Canadian consortium OURANOS provided
initial funding for the program.