Climate modelling

The Earth's climate is characterized by a complex interplay between the oceans, the atmosphere, sea and land ice, the vegetation, the biogeochemical cycles, and the influence of external factors. The feedbacks between the different climate subsystems and the variability of the climate system on different timescales are only partly understood.

Climate modelling provides a useful tool to investigate variability and feedbacks in a systematic way. The performance and sensitivity of climate models can be tested against instrumental observations and paleo-reconstructions. Our modelling efforts cover a wide range of climate fluctuations on seasonal, inter-annual, multi-decadal, and centennial time scales in the past, present and future climates taking into account natural drivers and anthropogenic influences.

 

Research Topics:

• Physical atmosphere, ocean and sea ice interactions, and feedbacks on biogeochemistry
• Internal (natural) climate variability on seasonal to centennial timescales
• Paleoclimatic variations
• Seasonal to decadal predictability
• Simulation of past climate variations
• Anthropogenic climate change
• Model development

 

The models used in our group:

• Atmosphere: ECHAM5/6, OpenIFS
• Ocean: NEMO
• Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean model: Kiel Climate Model (ECHAM5/NEMO), FOCI (ECHAM6/NEMO), FOCI-OpenIFS (OpenIFS/NEMO)
• Ocean Biogeochemistry: PISCES, MOPS