Abstract
The Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) program is a leading-edge climate and Earth system model designed to address the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) mission needs. The ACME project involves collaboration between seven National Laboratories, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, four academic institutions, and one private-sector company. The ACME project funds ongoing efforts to ensure the model continues to make efficient use of DOE Leadership Computing Facilities (LCFs) in order to best address the three driving grand challenge science questions:
Water cycle: How will more realistic portrayals of features important to the water cycle (resolution, clouds, aerosols, snowpack, river routing, land use) affect river flow and associated freshwater supplies at the watershed scale?
Cryosphere systems: Could a dynamical instability in the Antarctic ice sheet be triggered within the next 40 years?
Biogeochemistry: What are the contributions and feedbacks from natural and managed systems to current greenhouse gas fluxes, and how will those factors and associated fluxes evolve in the future?
