Welcome to the CESM Tutorial

In 1983 NCAR created the Community Climate Model (CCM) as a freely available global atmosphere model for use by the climate research community. The scope of CCM development continued to expand and in 1994 NCAR scientists released the Climate System Model (CSM), a global model that included component models for the atmosphere, land surface, ocean, and sea-ice, communicating through a central coupler component. To recognize the broad community of users and sponsors contributing to this effort, the CSM was renamed the Community Climate System Model (CCSM). The CCSM model evolved to include ice sheet and biogeochemical modeling and was renamed the Community Earth System Model (CESM) in 2013.

This repository includes materials designed to be an introduction to running the CESM. The materials were developed to support the CESM tutorial and serve as reference documentation for all CESM users.

Goals of This Tutorial

Through this online tutorial you will learn how to run the CESM model, modify the model experiments, and use the model output. These tutorial materials are designed for the CESM version 2 (CESM2)

Yearly In-Person Tutorials

The CESM tutorial was started in 2010 and is typically offered as an in-person summer workshop. If you are interested in attending the tutorial, please see the CESM webpage for the most up to date information about when the tutorial will next be offered in Boulder, Colorado and the timeline for applying.

CESM Project Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which is a major facility sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Cooperative Agreement No. 1852977. Staff time on this project was also supported by the Climate and Global Dynamics (CGD) laboratory.

Acknowledgements

A number of people have been critical to this effort, including:

• Cecile Hannay, David Bailey, Peter Lawrence, Hui Li, Sophia Macarewich, Jesse Nusbaumer, Adam Phillips, and Kate Thayer-Calder who serve on the CESM tutorial committee and put together the tutorial materials.
• Alice DuVivier, Brian Dobbins, Gunter Leguy, and Gustavo Marques, who helped test materials and have contributed substantially.
• Elizabeth Faircloth, who supports the CESM program administratively and without whom everything would probably fall apart.
• David Lawrence, who supported this effort as CESM chief scientist.
• Testers, others...