Models in COAPEC

• The Met Office Unified Model: HadCM3
• Other Models used in COAPEC

The Met Office Unified Model

The main climate model in use by COAPEC researchers is "HadCM3", i.e. version 3 of the Coupled (i.e. ocean-atmophere) Model of the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre.
HadCM3 is just one configuration of the Met Office Unified Model (UM), a highly configurable model used by the Met Office both for numerical weather prediction and for climate modelling. Other configurations of the Hadley Centre model include atmosphere-only, ocean-only, or an atmosphere coupled to a single-layer or reduced resolution ocean, as well a substantially lower resolution version called FAMOUS. Some of these configurations are described on this page from the climateprediction.net project, and on this page related to the RAPID programme.

The code of the UM was developed on Cray supercomputers, but much work has also gone into producing a ported version of the UM which will run on other platforms including other supercomputers, Unix workstations, personal computers and Beowulf clusters. HadCM3 is normally run using version 4.5 of the ported model. Version 5.5 is now also available, which includes new dynamics, but its coupled climate version (HadGEM) is currently only available to non-Hadley-Centre users under special agreement, so version 4.5 remains popular.

Use of the UM within the academic community is supported by CGAM - see their UM information service page, and in particular they support the use of the UM on the SGI Origin and Altix supercomputers which are available as part of the via CSAR service (see here or here for more information).

The UM can also be run on the COAPEC Beowulf cluster. This is supported by COAPEC core team member Alan Iwi, who will also provide assistance with running the UM more generally within COAPEC (and has a portable UM page with some information).

For use on other machines, the code for the UM can be obtained from the BADC (see here), or directly from the Hadley Centre (contact portable_um@metoffice.com).

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Other models

Researchers in COAPEC are using a range of ocean atmospheric, ice and coupled models, some of which may be available to the community.

FORTE (fast-ocean-rapid-troposphere-experiment) Model

A model developed at NOCS and currently being used by projects at NOCS and Liverpool. The code for this model is being made available as a tool for the modelling community at large. For more information, email Robin Smith orBablu Sinha.

CHIME

A hybrid co-ordinate ocean model coupled to HadAM3 (the atmospheric component of HadCM3) developed as part of the COAPEC project "North Atlantic variability and predictability, and impacts on European climate, in UK coupled models".

C-GOLDSTEIN

A fast, low resolution coupled model designed for palaeoclimate runs, developed as part of the COAPEC project "The role of sea ice on seasonal to decadal variability in the North Atlantic".