Thanks Alex for leading this important effort for the LWG. Sorry I couldn’t be there for most of discussion at the last LWG, thanks to Claire for posting the mtg notes so I could catch up.
I agree with all the points raised. I’d also like to add two additions I think are important for the next 10 yrs of ACCESS.
- The need for local (km-scale) seasonal and climate information, and a concern that our current generation of land models are not fit-for-purpose for this scale.
- A better ability to represent the impacts on climate from human interventions on the landscape (agriculture, irrigation, forestry, dams, aerosols, urban, fire management, carbon farming etc).
There is obviously a huge interest from govt, industry and public in locally relevant, nationally important weather and climate change impacts. Local interventions are something our politicians and planners have control over, very different to contributing to a global effort that can be stalled by bad actors overseas. International research groups are already undertaking global km scale simulations, and this capability for ACCESS is a stated goal of 21st Century Weather in the next 5 yrs.
These topics are also particularly relevant for land. For ocean and atmosphere modelling km-scales will resolve more processes explicitly, things should get better. But for us in land, all our previous assumptions built into our existing models (ignoring cities, lateral flow, heterogeneity, complex terrain, human interventions etc) come back to bite us, so we need to do more work.
Likewise for weather where km scales are routinely done, but in weather model deficiencies can be obscured through the good DA & AI approaches. At seasonal and climate timescales we can’t so easily hide bad physics assumptions with good data assimilation or broad empirical relations.
So I see these two points (km-scale land modelling and the ability to model the impact of human interventions on the landscape) as two critical needs requiring focus in the next 10 yrs. What worries me is the lack of investment in land model development compared with the need, here or overseas.
As I didn’t get a chance to raise these at the LWG meeting it would be great to hear what others think.