Top ARM Accomplishment: Advancement of Cloud-Resolving Models

Summary

Cloud-resolving models (CRMs) have much better spatial resolution than climate models and are well suited for studying cloud processes. ARM has played a major role in promoting and expanding CRM research, most notably in supplying data for test cases for the international GEWEX Cloud Systems Study (GCSS), a forum for all the world’s cloud modelers. ARM datasets were the key factor enabling the great success of GCSS. ARM also provided early support for research in “super-parameterization”, an important methodological advance in climate model treatment of clouds wherein a simple CRM is embedded in a climate model, bypassing traditional (and often poor) cloud parameterization without incurring impossible computer costs. ARM-sponsored super-parameterization research eventually led to the selection and creation of a major NSF Science Center, the Center for Multiscale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes, at Colorado State University.