The utility of Earth system Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs)

Susanne L. Weber

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2010, vol. 1, issue 2, 243-252

Abstract: Intermediate‐complexity models are models which describe the dynamics of the atmosphere and/or ocean in less detail than conventional General Circulation Models (GCMs). At the same time, they go beyond the approach taken by atmospheric Energy Balance Models (EBMs) or ocean box models by using sophisticated parameterizations of the unresolved flow or by explicitly resolving the equations of geophysical fluid dynamics albeit at coarse spatial resolution. Being computationally fast, intermediate‐complexity models have the capability to treat slow climate variations. Hence, they often include components of the climate system that are associated with long‐term feedbacks like ice sheets, vegetation and biogeochemical cycles. Here again they differ from conventional GCM‐type models that feature only atmosphere and ocean/sea‐ice components. Many different approaches exist in building such a reduced model, resulting in a ‘spectrum of Earth system Models of Intermediate Complexity closing the gap between EBMs and GCMs’. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This article is categorized under: Climate Models and Modeling > Earth System Models

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.24

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:wirecc:v:1:y:2010:i:2:p:243-252

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().