Atmospheric General Circulation Models
On this page information about the Atmospheric General Circulation Models
ECHAM and MA-ECHAM is given.
ECHAM is a global climate model that has been developed at the Max Planck
Institute for Meteorology (MPI) in Hamburg
based on the ECMWF model, hence the model's name ECHAM.
Several changes, mostly in the parameterizations, were made in the model
to allow for climate and climate change studies.
At IMAU an extensive tropospheric chemistry scheme was coupled to the model.
A procedure to relax ECHAM to ECMWF analyses (nudging) was developed at KNMI.
The
Middle Atmosphere ECHAM (MA-ECHAM) is a model similar to ECHAM
but with a larger vertical model domain. While the model top of ECHAM is at
10 hPa (about 30 km height), MA-ECHAM has its top at 0.01 hPa, corresponding
to a height of about 80 km. It covers the atmosphere up to the mesopause
and thus allows for the study of the full stratosphere. MA-ECHAM has also
been developed at the MPI in Hamburg.
A more detailed overview of the models, and
information on how to install and run the model is available. Note that this
information is somewhat biased towards the Middle-Atmosphere version, but
that will be improved.
Further, we plan to have a meeting about 2-3 times a year for all the
CKO members working with ECHAM or MA-ECHAM. The intention of these meetings
is to inform each other about the progress of the research and to discuss
problems that are encountered.
The first meeting was on Thursday 10 February 2000 at the IMAU.
Last modified: Thu Apr 13, 2000
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