COLLOQUIUM: Ensemble Modeling of Climate-Carbon Cycle Interactions

The interactions between Earth's carbon cycle and climate are key to understanding both past and future climate change.  NOAA-GFDL  developed two coupled climate-carbon cycle models - or Earth System  Models (ESMs) - that are able to simulate these interactions.  While  the major achievement of these efforts is the ability to freely  integrate the coupled carbon and climate system in  a self-consistent  and self-sustaining manner, this independence from historical climate  observations obscures the direct comparison between modeled climate  and carbon response.  This seminar will provide an overview of  climate-carbon cycle interactions and discuss changes to the global  carbon budget and climate resulting from anthropogenic activity as  part of experiments performed in advance of the Fifth Assessment  report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  In  particular, we describe how we use multi-member ensembles of  historical simulations performed with GFDL's ESMs to provide further  context to the observed changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide to  support detection and attribution of the anthropogenic component.