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Climate change and sea level.

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An isophysical calculation model with open boundaries and tides of the North Sea and the Nordic Seas (sea-ice-model is implied) was developed and applied in: i) a hindcast of the years 1979-1993. The model was forced with atmospheric data from the ECMWF data types. ii) climate change experiments. The model was forced with atmospheric data from the control and 2XCO2 timeslice (T106) experiments of the DKRZ (German Climate Computing Centre) and the lateral boundary conditions are altered. Data available: daily data of sea surface elevation, sea surface circulation, sea surface temperature, and sea surface salivity. Monthly mean data of the deeper state of the oceans.
MAGICC (Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse gas Induced Climate Change) is a set of coupled gas-cycle, climate and ice-melt models that allow the user to determine the global-mean temperature and sea-level consequences of user-specified greenhouse gas and sulphur dioxide emissions. MAGICC is designed for two main purposes: 1) to compare the implications of a "policy" emissions scenario with a "reference" scenario in order to see how effective a specified emissions control policy is relative to a baseline "no policy" case. 2) to determine the sensitivity of results to model parameter changes. The latter may be done by comparing results for a given emissions scenario for a user-specified set of parameters with those for a default set of parameter values. The models used by MAGICC have been developed in the Climatic Research Unit over a number of years by Tom Wigley (currently working at NCAR, Boulder), Sarah Raper and Tim Osborn. These models are written and executed by FORTRAN. The MAGICC shell has been designed and written in TCL/TK by Mike Salmon, with assistance from Tom Wigley and Mike Hulme. The current version of MAGICC replaces all pre-1996 versions since the shell has been redesigned as a Windows application and since all the models and default parameter values are now those used by the IPCC in their Second Assessment Report (IPCC, 1996). FUNDING MAGICC, and the models used by MAGICC, have been funded from a number of sources over the years. These include the US Department of Energy, the UK Department of the Environment, the Electric Power Research Institute in the USA and DGXII of the Commission of the European Union.
SCENGEN 2 is a simple software tool which enables the user to exploit results from both simple and global climate model experiments, combined with observed global and regional climatologies, to construct a range of geographically explicit future climate change scenarios for the world. The software framework allows the user to explore the consequences for these scenarios of adopting different assumptions about climate system parameters and emissions scenarios and of selecting results from different global climate model (GCM) experiments. The effects of sulphate aerosols on future climate change may or may not be included. The simple and global climate models used by SCENGEN have all been used or reported by the IPCC, most of them in the latest 1995 Second Assessment Report (IPCC, 1996). The scientific rationale for the approach adopted in SCENGEN has been developed over a number of years by the Climate Research Unit, working with colleagues around the world, which has been reported and illustrated in a number of reports and scientific papers. DEVELOPMENT SCENGEN, meaning SCENario GENerator, has been developed by the Climatic Research Unit over the period from 1994 to 1996. Version 1 of SCENGEN was released during 1995 and operated as a DOS application. During 1996, SCENGEN has been totally re-designed and re-written as a Windows application running under TCL/TK. SCENGEN 2 is thus compatible with a new version of MAGICC 2, also re-writtento run under Windows. The other main differences between SCENGEN 1 and SCENGEN 2 are: the inclusion of three new GCM climate change experiments; the addition of a feature to allow climate change patterns resulting from aerosol fording to be handled; and the ability to save scenario images as EPS files for importing into other Windows applications. FUNDING SCENGEN 1 was developed initially in 1994 with funding from the Electricity Power Research Institute in the USA, directed through a contract between Professor Tom Wigley at UCAR and the Climatic Research Unit. The development of SCENGEN 2 has been supported from a number of sources including: the US Department of Energy (contract between the Climatic Research Unit and NCAR via Professor Tom Wigley), DGXII of the European Commission (contracts with Dr Sarah Raper, CRU, and between the Climatic Research Unit and the Soil Survey Research Centre at Silsoe) and the United Nations Environment Programme (contract between the Climatic Research Unit and CICERO, Oslo).
New data sets were developed for numerical modelling of the Greenland ice sheet. These are for ice thickness, bed elevation, surface elevation, accumulation rate, and precipitation rate. These were developed on a 20km grid, covering all of Greenland and the surrounding continental shelf, comprising a grid of 83 X 141 = 11703 gridpoints. The map projection was stereographic with standard parallel at 71 degrees North. The geometric data sets are an update of the data sets presented in Letreguilly et al. (1991). Data sources included the the ETOPO5 dataset for the ice-free area, radio-echo soundings made by the Technical University of Denmark during airborne campaigns in the seventies, and surface elevation data from ERS-1 satellite altimetry (Ekholm, 1996). The precipitation and accumulation data are an update of the map presented in Ohmura and Reeh (1991), including more detailed information from oversnow traverses, notably the Alfred-Wegener-Institute (Jung-Rothenhausler, 1998). For the interpolation of the various points onto the regular model grid, extensive use was made of the continuous curvature spline algorithm "surface" with a tension factor of zero, which is made available as part of the GMT software (Smith and Wessel, 1990). These data sets represent the most accurate and up-to-date physical characteristics of the Greenland ice sheet.

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