History of US CLIVAR Climate Process Teams

CPTs are small groups of observationalists, theoreticians, small-scale modelers, and scientists at modeling centers working closely together to improve parameterizations of a particular process in one or more IPCC-class models. These multi-institutional projects have been sponsored by NSF and NOAA through two proposal calls in 2003 and 2009. Following the completion of three initial pilot CPT projects, the US CLIVAR Process Study and Model Improvement (PSMI) Panel conducted a review to assess the efficacy of the approach, enumerate lessons learned, and inform agency consideration for a second round. In 2019, NOAA's Climate Variability and Predictability Program and Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections Program started five new CPTs with their announcements (Translating Land Process Understanding to Improve Climate Models and Transferring Understanding of Ocean Atmospheric Processes into Climate Model Improvements)

CPT 2019 Awards

• 3-D Land Energy and Moisture Exchanges: Harnessing High Resolution Terrestrial Information to Refine Atmosphere-to-Land interactions in Earth System Models
• From Boundary Layer to Deep Convection: The Multi-Plume Eddy-Diffusivity/Mass-Flux (EDMF) Fully Unified Parameterization
• Improving Modeled Momentum Flux in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer
• Ocean Transport and Eddy Energy
• Parameterizing the effects of sub-grid land heterogeneity on the atmospheric boundary layer and convection: Implications for surface climate, variability and extremes

CPT 2010 Awards

• CPT-1: Internal-Wave Driven Mixing in Global Ocean Models
• CPT-2: Ocean Mixing Processes Associated with High Spatial Heterogeneity in Sea Ice and the Implications for Climate Models
• CPT-3: Cloud Parameterization and Aerosol Indirect Effects
• CPT-4: Stratocumulus to Cumulus Transition
• CPT 2009 Announcement

CPT 2003 Awards

• CPT-1: Low-Latitude Cloud Feedbacks on Climate Sensitivity
• CPT-2: Ocean Eddy Mixed-Layer Interactions
• CPT-3: Gravity Current Entrainment
• CPT 2003 Announcement

Other Documents

• CPT Motivaton and Concept
• Review of the Climate Process Teams (2008)
• Translating Process Understanding to Improve Climate Models, A White Paper (2016)

The objectives of a CPT:

Speed the improvement of coupled models, data assimilation systems, and model components by:

• Parameterizing the important processes not included explicitly in climate models;
• Transferring theoretical and process-model understanding into improved treatment of processes in climate models;
• Sharpening our understanding of how particular physical processes impact the climate system;
• Identifying sustained observational requirements required by climate models for these parameterizations; and
• Identifying additional process studies necessary to reduce uncertainties associated with important climate model processes/parameterizations.