Abstract

To develop appropriate mitigation and adaptation strategies to address potential future environmental change society requires reliable estimates of the future state of the full Earth system. Such requirements extend the demands on the climate modelling community, beyond that traditionally considered in physical climate modelling, to also include key biogeochemical cycles and phenomena that may; (i) feedback onto the changing physical climate and/or (ii) change themselves in response to changes in the physical climate and thereby impact society and natural ecosystems. To address these needs, climate modelling groups around the world are now developing Earth System Models (ESMs) which build on a core physical coupled Global Climate Model (GCM), integrating representations of important biogeochemical phenomena into the GCM , with suitable couplings between the various model components. Under the Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme, the Met Office-Hadley Centre and the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) will jointly resource and coordinate future Earth System Modelling activities in the UK, with an initial aim being to develop a 1st version of a UK Earth System Model (UKESM1) for participation in the 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), in ~2016-2018. This presentation will motivate the requirement for advanced ESMs, presenting a number of recent findings detailing important interactions between the physical climate system and global biogeochemical cycles. It will then go on to outline the UKESM project and present initial development plans for the 1st version of UKESM1 .