Regional Climate Modeling: An Overview

Regional climate models are useful tools for regional climate research. They are especially helpful for studying the effects of topography, coastlines, and other complex landsurface properties on regional climate and for simulating these effects realistically. Although regional climate modeling started more than ten years ago, improvements in model physics and performance have been slow. There has been some discussion of uncertainties in regional climate model simulations, but little effort has been made to reduce those uncertainties. To identify problems in regional climate modeling and to enlighten future regional climate model development and application, the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, is sponsoring The First IPRC Regional Climate Modeling Workshop. The workshop focuses on the following topics: review of status of regional climate models and modeling studies; identification of problems, weaknesses, and uncertainties in regional climate models and modeling approaches; methods to improve regional climate models and model physics in order to improve simulation of different regional scale motions; algorithms used to verify model results and to validate the model physics that use new satellite datasets; and directions of future developments and improvements in regional climate models. The organizing committee is grateful to Dr. Julian P. McCreary, Director of the International Pacific Research Center, for sponsoring the workshop.