The Community Climate System Model Version 4

The fourth version of the Community Climate System Model (CCSM4) was recently completed and released to the climate community. This paper describes developments to all CCSM components, and documents fully coupled preindustrial control runs compared to the previous version, CCSM3. Using the standard atmosphere and land resolution of 1° results in the sea surface temperature biases in the major upwelling regions being comparable to the 1.4°-resolution CCSM3. Two changes to the deep convection scheme in the atmosphere component result in CCSM4 producing El Niño–Southern Oscillation variability with a much more realistic frequency distribution than in CCSM3, although the amplitude is too large compared to…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: DE-AC52-06NA25396, DE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC06-76RLO 1830
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Awards: DE-AC06-76RLO, AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC06-76RLO 1830, AC06-76RLO 1830, DE-AC52-06NA25396, 76RLO 1830, AC52-06NA25396, under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC05, 00OR22725
• B
  Battelle

  Awards: DE-AC06-76RLO 1830, DE-AC05, DE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC52-06NA25396, AC06-76RLO 1830, DE-AC06-76RLO
• S
  Strong
• OO
  Office of Science

  Awards: DE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC06-76RLO 1830, DE-AC52-06NA25396, AC05-00OR22725
• NN
  National Nuclear Security Administration

  Awards: DE-AC52-06NA25396, DE-AC05-00OR22725
• AS
  Advanced Scientific Computing Research

  Awards: DE-AC52-06NA25396, DE-AC05-00OR22725, Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725
• BA
  Biological and Environmental Research

  Awards: DE-AC05-00OR22725, 00OR22725, DE-AC52-06NA25396, DE-AC06-76RLO 1830
• LA
  Los Alamos National Laboratory

  Awards: AC52-06NA25396, DE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC52-06NA25396
• PN
  Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

  Awards: DE-AC06-76RLO 1830, DE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-AC06-76RLO