Ensemble SimulationS of Extreme weather events under Nonlinear Climate changE (ESSENCE)

H. A. Dijkstra

Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research Utrecht,
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands

The ESSENCE project, carried out within the Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications (DEISA), aims at a better understanding of forced and internally generated climate variability. A relatively large (16 member) ensemble simulation of climate change over the years 1950-2100 in response to a known forcing (before 2000) and a particular future emission scenario of greenhouse gases (after 2000) has been carried out using the ECHAM5-OM1 (MPI, Hamburg) model. This standard ensemble is accompanied by a set of four experimental (5 member) ensembles that address model parameter sensitivities. The computations were done on the NEC-SX8 at HLRS (Stuttgart) and data were stored and analyzed at SARA
(Amsterdam). In this presentation, I will give an overview of the computational
aspects of the ESSENCE project and present results from the standard ensemble, focussing on (i) the forced signal versus internal variability in several important fields (surface temperature, sea ice, meridional overturning, etc.) and (ii) a comparison with observations over the last decades.

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