The global carbon cycle in ACCESS-ESM1

Abstract

The Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS) is used by CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and Australian universities to produce weather forecasts and climate projections.

ACCESS has been recently extended to include land and ocean carbon cycle components in its Earth System Model (ESM) version, ACCESS-ESM1. Here we analyse the results from ACCESS-ESM1 historical simulations including their validation against independent estimates and future projections using representative concentration pathways (RCPs). The main focus of the analysis is on carbon related variables. We also explore the carbon-concentration and carbon-climate feedbacks by performing idealized simulations, where atmospheric CO2 levels are increased at a prescribed rate of 1%/yr.

Biography

Dr Tilo Ziehn is senior research scientist at the CSIRO Climate Science Centre. He is a member of the land surface modelling team currently investigating the impact of climate change on future land carbon uptake.

Before coming to Australia, he was a post-doc at the University of Bristol (2009-2011) working on carbon cycle data assimilation. During his PhD at the University of Leeds (2005-2009) he developed a sensitivity analysis software package for complex modelling systems.

Tilo has been working on a wide range of topics, including parameter estimation using 4DVar and Monte Carlo methods, green house gas network design based on Bayesian inverse modelling and global sensitivity analysis applied to various case studies in environmental engineering and earth system science.