Speaker
Description
Chemistry climate models (CCMs) are constructed to encapsulate our understanding of important atmospheric processes affecting the chemical state of the atmosphere, subject to the fundamental constraint imposed by our computational capacity to produce results in a reasonable amount of time. These models are routinely used to provide simulations to inform science and policy, including going back in time to long before our direct observational record began and going into the future to make projections. The central role of CCMs in testing our understanding of atmospheric processes and making projections argues for regular assessments of models against available observations, but motivating efforts to bridge the gap between observations and models is not always easy. The Chemistry Climate Model initiative (CCMi), the successor to the CCMVal activity, regularly organizes a set of coordinated model experiments to test CCMs and provide projections. This presentation will discuss the successes and challenges CCMi has faced testing models against observations.
