Our Aim: To Understand Earth’s Changing Climate
We are interested in the processes that establish Earth’s climate and that cause it to change.
Interplay of the Atmosphere and the Ocean.
Credit: MPI-M
Our interests gain impetus from the fact that human activity is amplifying the atmosphere’s greenhouse effect. That this will cause the surface to warm is well documented and not disputed. Much less clear, and hence more interesting, is exactly how much warming will arise from a given increase in greenhouse gases. How rapidly will this warming establish itself? Where will the gases go and how long will it take them to get there? And what are the consequences of the warming for the global circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, and the weather patterns that accompany it? Looking further afield, we are interested in when and where these changes will impact the ability of eco- and human-systems to inhabit the planet, and how this may in turn influence human activity. Answering these types of questions demands a deep understanding of how the climate system works.
The creative application of new technology, computers and sensors, continues to pace the development of understanding. Advances in computational capacity increase the fidelity of the models we use to develop to test our ideas. Advances in observational capacity help us test our ideas, and our models. In both respects, it is an exciting period in the development of our science. An emerging ability to compute and observe the Earth system at commensurate scales, globally, is giving the models we build and data we collect a life of its own, as they become fused into Earth information systems, creating an ability to see our Earth and its possible futures in new ways.
Overview on Research Structures
Research within the institute is organized in departments, each with a director, and each with its own particular, and self-defined, interests and culture. We exploit the overlap in our interests to advance our research in ways that would not be possible if we worked alone. An important way in which we do this is by working together in developing our models, to be at the forefront of developments worldwide. Even with very large (almost unimaginably so) computers, calculating Earth’s climate is not straightforward. Part of the problem is computational, the computers still aren’t large enough; and part is conceptual, the governing dynamics of many sub-systems are still not sufficiently understood. This requires shortcuts, either in how we formulate the equations, or how we compute their solutions. We take two approaches; one — which we call Sapphire — extrapolates to the climate from the near-term behavior of the global weather, computed over a nearly complete range of scales. Another — which we call Ruby — forgoes an accurate description of the weather, in the hope that it doesn’t sensitively influence the climate.
Visualization of clouds and wind speed in a climate simulation with a grid spacing of 1 km.
Credit: MPI-M, DKRZ, NVIDIA
Scientific Departments
Climate Physics
Our interest in the physics of the climate system focuses on questions related to how water in the atmosphere, on the land surface, and as exchanged with the ocean, influences Earth’s climate, and its response to perturbations. Our interest in this physics is enriched by our activities to advance observations and modeling on scales which are well adapted to quantifying these processes. Doing so stimulates our thinking and helps test our ideas.
Climate Dynamics
We aim to advance our fundamental understanding of global climate dynamics by employing a unique research strategy that involves systematically combining a hierarchy of models with principle-based theories. Our focus centers on exploring the mechanisms that govern large-scale climate change patterns across various regions, from the tropical Pacific to the polar areas, and understanding the interconnections of these regions.
Climate Variability
Our department uses models, observations, and theory to investigate the role of the ocean in climate variability and climate change on all timescales from hours to millennia. Some ocean-specific work is pursued solely within the department. Other work on interactions within the Earth system often occurs through collaboration with the other departments at the MPI-M.
